As a nation of animal lovers, we often treat our pets better than we treat ourselves. However, one of the downsides of keeping pets is that your home can start to smell of pet odours.
Have you ever walked into someone’s home and instantly noticed it smelled like a wet dog? It can make you worry that visiting friends and relatives notice the same thing when they come to your home.
Many people use dehumidifiers in their homes to control humidity levels and reduce condensation build-up on windows and cold surfaces. But dehumidifiers are also very effective at controlling pet odours, which makes them an attractive addition to your home if you have pets. However, many people new to home dehumidifiers wonder if they are safe to use around their pets.
Are dehumidifiers safe for pets?
The short answer to this question is yes. Running a home dehumidifier is perfectly safe if you have pets and can even help boost your pets’ health. Overly warm and humid homes can be very uncomfortable for your furry friends, especially since, unlike us, they cannot take off their fur coats to cool down.
If you feel uncomfortably warm and clammy in your home, imagine how your pets can feel, especially those with a lot of fur, such as cats and dogs. Dehumidifiers can be used in your home around your pets – even if you keep reptiles such as snakes and lizards that prefer warm, humid conditions.
One of the most significant benefits of using a dehumidifier in your home is that they help combat pet odours.
No matter how much we love our pets, they can make our homes smell unpleasant and often this is caused by the body odour they emit rather than the smell of pet food and extra-stinky treats that are left out.
Are dehumidifiers safe for dogs and cats?
If you keep dogs or cats, or both, no matter how clean you keep your floors and surfaces, the moment they walk back into your home from the outdoors, they will be tracking in the rain, mud, grass, grime and goodness knows what else on their feet.
Your dog can shake rainwater everywhere, and this water can seep into your carpets, rugs and soft furnishings, carrying their doggy odour along with it. Using a dehumidifier in your home can help to draw out this excess moisture from your carpets and soft furnishings and reduce the level of pet odour build-up in your home.
However, dehumidifiers can also bring a wealth of health benefits to your dogs and cats. Part of being a responsible pet owner is to keep our pets physically and emotionally healthy. However, if your home has high humidity, it can be challenging for your furry friends to feel comfortable and relaxed.
During the warmer summer months, dehumidifiers can help keep pets more comfortable by improving the air quality in your home, making it easier for them to breathe and stay cool. Dogs and cats are prone to overheating, causing them to feel anxious and stressed, which can exacerbate the problem.
Controlling the humidity levels in your home during the summer will make your dogs feel calmer, enabling them to relax and sleep at night rather than pace around restlessly, panting and whining.
Controlled humidity for other pets
While reptiles prefer more humidity, they can still suffer if the environment becomes too humid. Most lizards need to be kept at around 30-40% Relative Humidity to keep their skin healthy and prevent it from drying out. However, while their enclosure should be more humid than your home, too much humidity can negatively affect their health.
Running reptile enclosures in your home can also cause excess humidity that you don’t want to escape into your living spaces. You can run a dehumidifier to reduce humidity levels in your rooms without affecting your reptile enclosures.
Placing your dehumidifier safely
The question of where to put a dehumidifier in a home with pets is commonly asked. The last thing you want is for your dehumidifier to be knocked over by your playful puppy or for your cat to use it as a scratching post!
It is best to place your dehumidifier away from well-used routes that your pets use to access their food and drink. This is especially true if you have a big, lumbering dog that will knock everything out of its path to get to its food bowl at dinner time.
It can help to position your dehumidifier off the ground to prevent your dog from knocking it over. However, if you have a cat that climbs up the furniture around your home, it may be a better idea to put it on a shelf where your cat can’t reach and push over.
While it may be tempting to put your dehumidifier into the corner of a room to keep it out of your pets’ way, room corners don’t provide adequate airflow and ventilation for your dehumidifier to run optimally (we wrote about that here).
If you have a new puppy, it can help to choose a portable dehumidifier that doesn’t need to be plugged into a wall socket. This will eliminate any worries about your puppy chewing through power cables and risking electrocution.
Self-draining dehumidifier models may also be a better choice for your home if you are worried about your dog or cat knocking over the machine and drinking the spilt water from the collection reservoir. The water from dehumidifier is NOT safe to drink! Check our article about this here.
Meaco 12L Dehumidifier with Air Purifier 2 in 1
- Low energy (165W)
- Extract: 12L per day
- HEPA filter
- Humidistat between 30 to 80%
- Auto stop
- 41dB noise level
Dehumidifiers are good for you and your pets!
Dehumidifiers are excellent devices that help remove pet odours and excess moisture in the air that can lead to mould and mildew growth. Dehumidifiers help to clean the air (especially those with filters), reducing airborne pollutants such as dust, exhaust fumes and pet dander that can be a trigger for many allergic reactions.
For any pet owner that is considering using a dehumidifier for the first time and worried that it wouldn’t be compatible with their pets, we hope this post has put your mind at ease.
Last update on 2024-12-21 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
