Hartz "Stay Off" Training Aid for Pets

[Ivan Seeking]

Hartz® LIVING™ Stay Off Training Aid™ Keeps pets away from furniture, carpets, trees, shrubs, garbage, cans/bags, and other "forbidden areas" this product repels dogs and cats for up to 24 hours. Use indoors to break your pet of undesirable habits such as sleeping on furniture and rugs or to keep out of forbidden areas. Always use with consistent training. Praise your pet for good behavior and scold your pet for bad behavior.
http://www.hartz.com/Our%20Products/browse.asp?SkuDetail=3270082086.12.3&ActionID=2

We have a new kitten and have been using this to break her of peeing on the carpet, but as far as I can tell, it is worthless. And it turns out that using Woolite upholstery cleaner is much more effective. Once I spray an area of the carpet with this, she won't go anywhere near it.

[WarPhalange]

Yeah, I've heard that about a few of those kinds of spray on pet repellents. That they basically suck. I think we even had one for our dog.

Something with ammonia would be more effective. So like you said cleaners tend to be better.

[Ivan Seeking]

The Woolite is nice because it is designed to be sprayed on and then allowed to dry. Of course you are then supposed to vacuum, so I can't be sure what will happen when left for a long period of time. I tend to think that any chemical reactions will have stopped, but we will see. We might get some discoloration.

I would be afraid to use something not designed to be put on carpeting. It could cause damage.

[Evo]

The Woolite pet carpet cleaner has an ingredient that neutralizes the ammonia and saves the carpet from being destroyed. If you have wool carpet, I'll send you a pair of scissors so you can cut the spot out and turn it over.

I learned a long time ago from having kids GET A STEAM CLEANER.

[Ivan Seeking]

Thanks, but no, it's not wool, and we were planning to replace the carpet soon anyway.

[Moonbear]

Most, if not all, of those pet/animal repellent products are completely useless.

In my early days in science, I assisted on projects testing deer repellents since we had a captive herd to work with to ensure there would be deer near whatever we sprayed it on (in our case, we got potted shrubs known for getting destroyed by deer from a local nursery, so we could change them out with each new product). We'd put out the control, unsprayed plants, and then ones with either the test product or some product already on the market...the deer would ignore the unsprayed plants and go straight for the "seasoned" ones...that's how we started to refer to those "repellents" as seasoning for the deer.

For pets, they're usually attracted to the urine left behind from previous visits, so breaking them of going someplace they shouldn't means getting rid of that urine scent (so, in contrast to what WarPhalange posted, no, you want to avoid products with ammonia in them at all cost when dealing with pets). That can be tough to do if it has had time to soak through carpet into layers of padding or subflooring. Mostly, you have to clean quickly and thoroughly.