Dog & Baby Hacks: Unconventional Uses for 3 Conventional Items
If you have a dog, you know that dogs come with a lot of stuff. If you have a kid or multiple kids, you know kids come with lots of stuff. Yes, endless amounts of stuff and limited space to keep it.
Puppy Pads
While as a Dog Trainer, I am not likely to advise you to use puppy pads to potty train your dog, I have found some wonderful advantages to having them on hand, especially since becoming a mom. They are great for cleaning up large liquid messes where paper towels just don’t cut it. Whether it is pee, liquid poo, or just spilled milk, one puppy pad can clean up one mess that 10 paper towels could not. As a brand new mom with a brand new baby suffering from sleep deprivation and pure exhaustion, the last thing I wanted to do was crawl out of bed to change a dirty diaper, and I was not going to let my daughter sit in a dirty diaper.
Keeping a couple of puppy pads at my bedside solved this problem. I’d put the puppy pad on the bed and change my baby girl’s diaper right there on the puppy pad. If she peed or pooed while I was changing her, no big deal, it would absorb into the pad, which could be tossed in the trash, and I still had a clean, dry bed to sleep in. I also always keep a clean pad on top of the changing table. All moms know that babies come with lots of laundry and the last thing you need is more laundry. Saved once again by the puppy pad! You no longer have to wash the changing table cover whenever your baby pees or poos while changing their diaper.
Lastly, most diaper bags come with changing pads, you can even get them with these gimmicky charging stations built into them. As a new mom, I bought into this gimmick and have yet to use the changing station (who has time for the setup & take down). I used the changing pad once or twice and quickly decided it was useless because once it is soiled, it is another dirty piece of laundry I have to carry around in my car and wash when I get home. Lay a puppy pad down where you need to change your baby, keep them protected from the germs of public restrooms, protect your friends and family’s furniture and carpet, and protect your car's interior when on the go.
Dog poop bags
Dog poop bags are a staple in every responsible dog owner’s tool kit and are a great addition to a mama’s tool kit. They can be used to clean up dog and baby messes, especially on the go.
Even before I became a mama, I found myself using dog poop bags to contain the trash in my car, especially trash from cleaning up spilled coffee or other food or beverage in addition to the typical dog messes. Since becoming a mama, I have found them to be very useful for cleaning up all kinds of baby messes: spilled food and drink, leaky diaper, etc. If using disposable diapers, throw the soiled diaper into a poop bag, seal it off with a knot, and you are set for clean travel until you can find a trash can. Not to mention what to do with soiled baby clothes that come with a leaky diaper?
Dog poop bags to the rescue for safe and clean storage until you get home. If using cloth diapers, you probably know it can be tricky to deal with the poo while on the go and even just at home when you are figuring out your cloth diapering system. I hmmm’d and haaa’d over using cloth diapers before finally deciding to commit to them when my daughter was about 4 months old. The truth is I was sick of buying disposable diapers all the time, and then my daughter would outgrow them part way through a box. It became a huge waste of money; many cloth diapers are designed, so they grow with your baby. One of my hesitations with cloth diapers was dealing with the poop. I did not want to hose the diaper off into the toilet; too much risk of splashing poop everywhere, and a splash guard was not practical in my tiny bathroom.
I soon discovered disposable and biodegradable diaper liners (a thin sheet that goes over the top of the soaker pad; it catches solids and lets pee pass through). These and having a roll of poop bags on hand solved my problem. I put the solids and the diaper liner in a biodegradable poop bag and toss it in my diaper pale, which is still outfitted for disposable diapers. The rest of the soiled diaper goes in a wet bag.
Baby wipes
Being an outdoor enthusiast, dog owner, and trainer, I had baby wipes in my tool kit long before having a baby. I’d use them in my car to wipe my face and hands after an adventure in the woods. I use them to wipe the dogs to remove loose dirt and any nastiness the dogs could have rolled in during our adventure. Yes, you know what I am talking about; they are dogs and will roll in nasty shit sometimes. I have also used them with poop bags to clean up some nasty messes.
When traveling with dogs and kids, shit happens, and baby wipes are useful for both, regardless of where the shit came from. I had a foster dog that had diarrhea in the crate in my car once while traveling. I used poop bags to pick up as much of the poo as possible, then used baby wipes to clean up the rest, including the dog. I stuffed all the dirty wipes in a dog poop bag and tossed them at the next available trash can. And yes, this may have been another scenario where having a puppy pad or two on hand to help absorb the mess would have been helpful.