My dog left an unwelcome gift on my rug. Then my robo-vac spread it around. Enter the Platinum SmartWash carpet cleaner…

You may well recall the popular YouTube video 'Robotic Vacuum Cleaner Smears Dog Poop on Carpet'. If you haven't seen it, well, you can probably work out what happened. That's right: a Robot Vacuum Cleaner Smeared some Dog Poop on a Carpet. You are probably thinking, "That was setup! How could a robot vac possibly smear dog poop onto a carpet in a way that is worse than a general dog-poop-on-carpet scenario?" Well, reader, you are wrong. Because it happened to me.

Actually, the whole 'robot vac makes dog poop situation intolerable' thing is very well known, by those who know. T3 was once sent a plastic k9 plop along with T3 Award winning robot vac Roborock S6 MaxV, specifically to demonstrate that the robot was so advanced, it could detect and avoid canine droppings. Although funnily enough, it turned out it couldn't. Coming soon, the new iRobot Roomba J7 also promises to banish dog poop floor unpleasantness, by swerving the little gifts left to you by your pets.

Dog poop on carpet: there is a solution

Now, the makers of those videos may have enjoyed their moments of fame, and perhaps made a few 100 dollars in ad revenue, but they were still left with an ordure-stained rug or carpet. 

I, however, underwent the same ordeal and came out smiling. Or at least, of not literally smiling, at least with a rug that wasn't brown, with an off-putting odour. Let me tell you how. 

I recently acquired a Vax Platinum SmartWash carpet cleaner, for review purposes. You can read about it here and in our best carpet cleaner top 10. I also have two Labradors – one has an oesophagus condition and the other is a puppy. 

So I was naturally both expecting to test the Vax on animal excreta, and keen to see how well it performed. Things started well, with the Platinum SmartWash proving more than equal to removing some puppy sick from my Axminster. 

Overjoyed with the sterling job done by the Vax in removing regurgitated matter from my medium-pile carpet – including drying it remarkably well – I then remotely commanded my very good little robot vac to give the room a sweep. Just in order to clear up any remaining fluff balls – all carpet cleaners leave a few fluff balls behind. 

After about 30 minutes I received a text from the robot vac saying it was stuck. 

It turned out the puppy had ventured into the same room I’d just cleaned it and left a surprisingly large ‘accidental’ deposit. I actually laughed at the sight of dog shit smeared all over the previously clean carpet. However, I stopped laughing immediately when I turned the robot vac upside down. In order to stop you from feeling ill, I won’t go into details on that though I will say the toothbrush proved handy.

Anyway, out came the Vax again and, strike me down with a feather if it didn’t remove all trace of the offending matter, leaving the carpet spick and span once again. What I’m trying to say here is that, according to my two extreme tests, the Vax Platinum SmartWash definitely makes short work of cleaning both vomit and shit off a carpet and that’s a good enough recommendation in my book. I’ll take two please.

In case you need any further technical details after that story, here you go. This new carpet washer from Vax uses smart technology to dispense the water and cleaning solution when you push it and dry the carpet when you pull. Anyone who's used a carpet or hard floor cleaner before will know that you normally need to pull a little trigger to make it wet and release it to make it dry – the CrossWave Cordless Max from Bissell, for instance, which you can read all about by clicking on the following text.

• Sorry Dyson, there is a better way to clean hard floors

Here, there is no activation trigger so it’s really as simple as pushing a thing backwards and forwards over some dog crap. Vax’s boffins have even addressed the issue of drying alone by including a ‘Dry Only’ mode, which functions with both forwards and backwards motion. It also has a bonus Rinse mode for those who are paranoid about leaving solution residue behind.

The Platinum SmartWash is equipped with a large 3.5-litre clean water tank, a 1.9-litre dirty water container and a separate auto-mixing reservoir for the cleaning solution (it comes with two 250ml Platinum Solution bottles and a Pre-Treatment spray). The cable, meanwhile, is a very generous 9 metres in length. For stairs and hard-to-reach areas and car seats, this model also comes with a special SpinScrub hand tool, a 2.5m hose and a little bag to store them in.

Thank you Vax, you saved my life from a world of pain. Or at least my carpet from a load of poop. You can't say that about the latest iPhone. 

• Finally, here is that video, if you have not seen it before.

Here is another one entitled 'Roomba Spreads Dog Poop'. Can you work out what happens here? That’s right: a Roomba spread some dog poop. How do they come up with these titles?