Having a dog means that your carpet will be dirtier than the average household's. After getting my dog I quickly discovered that my set-of-the-pants cleaning style wasn't going to fly anymore, so I went out and got the Hoover SteamVac Carpet Cleaner with Clean Surge, F5914-900. It was very easy to set up and get going, despite my tendency to not really use the manual. Soon enough I was cleaning with it regularly.

Pretty much the whole thing is covered in see-through plastic, so you can actually watch it work. I was amazed at how much stuff this steamer was pulling out of the carpet. Though you have to vacuum first so you don't clog the steamer (a fact I learned the hard way), you will still be pulling all kinds of dirt out of the carpet.

On the other hand, I often found that in my pursuit of removing a difficult stain I would end up putting too much steam into the carpet. Then the vacuum, being partially clogged with dog hair and other debris, couldn't pull it out of the carpet. So I'd end up with a nasty mildew smell on that part of the carpet. Once you unclog the vacuum (a difficult task), you can usually pull that smell out of the carpet.

The last time that happened, however, I found that no matter what I did I couldn't remove the mildew smell. So I called a professional carpet cleaner and *voila!* it was gone. So now I've put up the Hoover SteamVac for good. For my money, it's much better to spend $200 a visit to get a pro to come out and clean my carpets twice a year than rely on this unit to do the job. All I do is spot-clean with club soda (as recommended by my carpet cleaner) in between visits and the results have been 10 times better than with the Hoover.