Keeping carpet clean is tough. I have found guests subtly protest against taking their shoes off.. New guests or clients are happy to take their shoes off (I'm a photographer so clients come to my home for meetings) but friends can be rude 'oh what? are you serious? you want my shoes off?' that annoys me I have 2 cats. Ugh! Pet stains = Ugh! I am a germofobe.. Well I'll kiss my kitties.. otherwise if I was THAT much a germafobe I wouldn't have cats.. but one of them has a thyroid disorder and sometimes the poor little guy vomits. My mistake has been spending a lot of money testing different carpet cleaning products, and a lot of the time sponging the carpet clean with such products would create a bigger mess or spread the stain! Ikea sell $15 metre square colorful rugs. I bought 6.. black, red, pink, yellow, green, blue when they are laid next to eachother it looks like one big rug, and this has helped a lot. Its so easy to wash one rug when a cat pukes, than it is to wash the actual carpet I have discovered that Vinegar is a bit of a miracle washer! If I clean the cat vomit with vinegar I get better results than ANY product from the shelves. I recently didn't realise that a lemon fell from my shopping bag behind a polyester ikea crate full of clothes, and the lemon had developed that dusty black mould and the mould dropped to the carpet It vaccumed up easily but I washed that part of the carpet by hand with cloudy ammonia. I read online that ammonia kills germs like mould. I seem to have made a big water stain though which I'm annoyed about I paid a local carpet cleaner guy $100 which was a bargain for a 2 room clean of a 1 bedroom apartment. The people I hired last year charged me $140 as they wanted extra money to come up one flight of stairs. This man was lovely. Even though I vac twice a week and mop almost daily, his industrial machine got up 2 large handfuls of cat hair!!! He said the minute I told him I had pets over the phone, he brought his special equipment. Unfortunately I messed up the carpet where I used the cloudy ammonia. There's just some darker markings like water staining, so I'm trying the watered down laundry soap routine this time

I know this is an old post - but for any new readers who come across it (like I did) I do NOT recommend the Bissell pro Heat I have the Pet version and it's pure JUNK! I've had it 2 years and it's not used heavily (meaning I'm not using it every month) I try to scrub the carpets every 6 months - I have a hand held for spills! - It has broken down on me more times than I'd like to count 1st it stopped sucking up water, fixed that, 2nd the water tank that you put clean water into a "bladder" and the dirty water is supposed to go into the tank the bladder sits in - well it doesn't it all goes into the "bladder" (The clean water) so I have to empty it more often because it says it's full which it is but it's because it has more clean water than it picked up dirty but since it mixed together it's all dirty! - it's not supposed to do that , Third and most current issue(as of last night 2/6/18) The dispenser where you put your "shampoo" is not spraying out. I put a home made pre-treatment on before I used it (I just mixed generic oxy clean and water in a spray bottle, and soaked all the stains) I didn't have much carpet to clean in the room I cleaned but I'd say 4x4 area if that - I had to empty out the water tank 4 times! That should of not been emptied once room wasn't big enough to need to empty it out - when I was done, I took both canisters out so I could put just plain water, and do a rinse to get any left behind residue (I use LA Totally Awesome all Purpose Cleaner in mine, not any store bought rug cleaning solution) my solution was not used at all it was still 100% full , but I didn't know this until the end! However with my home made stain remover and just plain water the carpet does look a bit better! but it had nothing to do with the machine! I will go back to Hoover and Never buy another Bissell product again I swore off that brands Vacuum cleaner years ago! Yes in the after picture the carpet is still dirty but stains came almost all the way out without using any actual cleaning solution in the machine., So now I have to spray the cleaning solution all over the carpet by hand and then use the scrubber to suck it up, hopefully that'll get it the rest of the way clean

Ceramic is less sliding, less damage. However dogs are dogs and if you have one that goes through hyper fits like after baths etc, they will slide regardless. Keep in mind though, easier on your joints, easier on the dogs joins, so ceramic is rough on a dogs joints, especially if they have to sleep on the floor. Ceramic is tons harder to clean than the vinyl wood though, which you can pretty much dust, no matter how much you clean a ceramic floor if you take a white rag across it you will get dirt.. I'd go with something like this http://www.bestlaminate.net/products/TILE_Black_Slate_Tile_Laminate_Fl ooring-940-0.html not that company per say, but the tile won't show damage from the dogs, it's not ceramic and will have an underlay which will help, it won't get super cold, and it would be less slippery than the faux wood, but more than the ceramic, but easier to clean than ceramic.

@Laura Hoefer seems like your situation is not as bad as ours in terms of exposure. We didn't know about the windows and my kid's bed was right by them. He got exposed a lot with all the opening and closing. Plus the age doesn't help - he still puts everything in his mouth. If you decide to strip them yourself, I would advise to take a class on lead safety. That being said seems like it's a very complicated process and it might make the situation worse. There are some sealing paints for lead, but you'll still have to scrape the peeling paint off, which is dangerous. I'm going to strip only the 1st floor windows as it gets warmer (they are 8 ft tall so super expensive to replace), but we decided to replace the rest. Restoring is even more expensive if a professional is hired. Have you tried using professional lead cleaning products for lead to mop the floors? Maybe this will help reduce the exposure for your kids. It's all so scary. I'm scared that my kid will be permanently brain-damaged due to all of this :(