The Idiot Dog ate what?

June 13, 2007 11:50 AM

Dog + Pig Roast Charcoal Ashes = Dear God, how do I get this out?

We had a great pig roast on Sunday. Yay! Monday evening, DH and I cleaned the grill, putting all the ashes and charcoal remains in a bucket. We moved one item from the backyard and returned to find the idiot dog with his face in the bucket. We got him away from it and removed it from his accessible area. No ashes were on his muzzle and he wasn't swallowing when we caught him so we thought we were lucky.

When we returned home from work yesterday, the idiot dog (his new official name, btw) had redecorated the carpet of one room. The mess came from the back end. This morning revealed a puke pile deposited overnight. How he didn't throw up the ashes earlier, I have no idea.

The idiot dog seems perfectly fine after his ash purgative. However, we have beige carpet with a hideous dark gray stain now. How do I get this out?

posted by onhazier to home & garden (9 comments total)

Something very similar happened when I was a wee one and I distinctly remember my mom getting a Stanley Steemer™ rental to take care of that mess.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 11:59 AM on June 13, 2007

Ripley the wonder pug had to be tube-fed charcoal after an unfortunate tylenol scavenging incident, and she farted little poofs of charcoal dust on the white carpet for days. We used a pencil eraser to remove them.

Because there may be a fat component to your mess, you might consider dawn dishwasher detergent as your first approach.
posted by answergrape at 12:58 PM on June 13, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Not quite the same situation, but I've used Citra Solve and other similar organic-cleaning products very successfully when the cat decided that traipsing through the fireplace ash and then on the white carpet was fun, and also for various cat-barf-on-carpet clean-ups.

I've read that organic messes tend to be most easily cleaned with organic products (rather than big-gun chemical solvents) and it's advice that's seemed to hold true since I started following it.
posted by occhiblu at 1:18 PM on June 13, 2007

I bought a can of Simple Green Grill Cleaner at Home Depot to clean out my insanely grungy smoker. It did a great job getting rid of that nasty mix of fat and soot buildup. It doesn't have any caustic ingredients, so it shouldn't hurt your carpet.*

*Test on a small patch first of course.
posted by TungstenChef at 1:38 PM on June 13, 2007

I would try Fantastic with OxyClean. It gets out pretty horrendous stains from carpet & upholstery. I can't stop recommending it after it made a 5-year set-in coffee stain (an entire latte) on my beige car seat disappear completely.
posted by tastybrains at 2:41 PM on June 13, 2007

Nature's Miracle?
posted by zaphod at 4:50 PM on June 13, 2007

Ok, Citra Solve we have on hand. I'll give that a shot and then hit the store if that doesn't work. Thank you for the suggestions.
posted by onhazier at 5:41 PM on June 13, 2007

Wow. Thanks for this. My pups did an almost the same thing recently...
posted by lalalana at 7:45 PM on June 13, 2007

I have found Spot Shot to take just about any stain out of just about any fabric or carpet we have in the house.
posted by tomierna at 8:38 PM on June 13, 2007