Pet boarding facilities need to maintain strict infection control to ensure the health and safety of your cat and dog clients.
A thorough clean between each animal isn’t enough to keep cats and dogs safe from disease – you need to disinfect as well.
Are you following infection control best practice? Here are the three key questions you need to ask yourself.
Do you have a cleaning & disinfection protocol?
A failsafe cleaning and disinfection protocol is essential for effective infection prevention and control in a pet boarding setting. The best disinfection regimes are ones that are easy to understand, execute and repeat day after day – regardless of who is performing the task.
Your disinfection regime should include clear processes to clean and disinfect:
- Each individual animal housing
- Grooming tables
- Runs
- Crates
- Any other multi-use surfaces
Are you using the best product?
Without the correct product, an effective process, or proper application, you could be leaving your clinic at risk of spreading disease amongst your animals. There are countless disinfection products available to purchase. These include bleach, ammonia, and products based on alcohol, phenols, or aldehydes. While many of these products may be effective as a cleaner or disinfectant in some circumstances, they can actually be quite harmful to both your staff and animals.
That’s why the Safe4 disinfectant cleaner was developed as an alternative to these products. The founders of Safe4 worked for many years to formulate a cost-effective veterinary disinfectant cleaner that was completely safe for staff and the animals in their care, but still highly effective against harmful viruses and bacteria.
Safe4 is non-toxic, non-staining and a non-irritant, so you can use it with confidence on all hard surfaces throughout your clinic. Its effectiveness has also been thoroughly tested – and proven – against a range of viruses, bacteria and fungi, including parvovirus, coronavirus, kennel cough, FIV, E-coli, and MRSA.
Are you diluting your disinfectant correctly?
It’s not a case of “the more the better” when it comes to disinfectant. Like any chemical, the dilution of any veterinary disinfectant cleaner is an exact science. Dilute it with too much water and you may minimise its effectiveness. Not enough dilution could result in a solution that is too concentrated and may irritate your staff’s skin or throat.
When you purchase Safe4 disinfectant you are provided with a handy dilution guide that will ensure you achieve the perfect solution for every application in your pet boarding facility. This guide also includes the minimum contact time required after application for the disinfectant to become effective.
Here’s a condensed dilution guide below:
| Organisms | Dilution | Minimum Contact Time |
| Viruses (e.g. FIV) | 1:100 water | 15 minutes |
| Fungi (e.g. Candida albicans) | 1:100 water | 15 minutes |
| Bacteria (e.g. Kennel cough) | 1:100 water | 30 minutes |
| Coronavirus & parvovirus | 1:50 water | 5 minutes |
Contact the Safe4 team
If you have any questions about infection control for your pet boarding facility, give us a call on 1300 661 821 or email info@safe4-aust.bingobango.com.au.