I Have a Senior Dog, and This Portable Carpet Cleaner Has Been a Game-Changer for Accidents (It’s on Sale!)

As far as cleaning products go, portable carpet cleaners have always been popular with both our readers and our editors here at AT. I’ve listened to my colleagues rave about the Bissell Little Green machine, for example, and though it seemed like a cool concept, I never anticipated needing one, myself. I probably should have, given that I’m the owner of a 13-and-a-half-year-old Pomeranian. Finn lives at my parents’ place, and over the summer, he started taking a few different medications, one of which is a diuretic. Although he always alerts us when he needs to go outside, he started being unable to hold his bladder and having accidents all over the house. He currently wears diapers, but it took about two months to find a design he couldn’t wiggle out of, so the carpet situation was dire for a while.

When my mom would call me, she’d often be upset about the urine smell lingering in the bedrooms and tired from having to scrub the carpets daily. That’s when I did a little digging and came across the Shark StainStriker, a portable carpet and upholstery cleaner that I had shipped to her house. Little did she know that the compact machine would quickly solve all of her cleaning-related problems.

What is the Shark StainStriker?

Some families are Bissell families. Others might prefer Dyson. But my family has always been a Shark family. We’ve owned and used the same Shark vacuum for roughly 15 years, so I knew the StainStriker would be durable and effective. It’s described as a dual-activated stain eliminator because it arrives with two liquid solutions: the Deep Clean Pro Formula and the OXY Multiplier Formula. You pour each one in their respective compartments, along with water in the clean water tank. When you buy the machine directly from Shark’s website, it also comes with a reversible bristle tool, pet tool, crevice tool, and hose clean tool. Together, these attachments allow you to remove stains and odors from virtually any soft surface in the home, be it the carpet, sofa, or even your mattress. What’s more, the StainStriker weighs just 9 lbs., and it boasts a 12-foot power cord and 4.3-foot hose. This means you can easily bring it along to clean the stairs, your car, the upper levels of your house, and high-up spots, like window treatments.

Why I Love the Shark StainStriker

My parents were eager to test the StainStriker the moment it arrived, and when I called them the next day, they were happy to report that their carpets smelled fresh and clean, like laundry detergent. My mom had used it both upstairs and on the rugs downstairs, noting that it was super easy to bring along wherever she went and that her hands and wrists no longer hurt from having to manually scrub the floors. When I arrived home for the winter holidays, no urine smells were detected, and the carpets did, indeed, look spotless. Although Finn has been wearing his diapers for the past month or so, he did have an accident early one morning when none of us heard him asking to go outside. This time, it was a No. 2, and I was on carpet-cleaning duty. After picking up what I could, I pulled out the StainStriker, filled it with water and cleaning solution, and got to work.

My mom said her favorite attachment is the reversible bristle tool, so that’s what I used. It has a button you press to dispense the cleaning solution over the affected area and another button that employs suction to pull the mess out of the fibers. The carpet I was cleaning is medium density and has half-inch-long fibers, so I was impressed to find that with five or so swipes over each of the soiled areas, they looked and smelled clean. Most importantly, no stains were left behind, either. A couple of other things to note are that the water tanks hold more than enough water, even for large accidents, and the machine is quite loud. But considering how quickly and effectively it works, I don’t mind.

Whether you have an older dog like I do or you’ve just adopted a puppy, you’ll get tons of use out of the StainStriker. I recommend it for anyone with pets and/or small children who wants an easy solution for carpet and upholstery messes. Plus, you can currently get it for 21% off when you use code DEC21 at checkout! Not a bad deal, at all.

Buy: Shark StainStriker Portable Carpet & Upholstery Cleaner, $110.59 (normally $139.99)