I have found that a good solution to digging at the carpet is to use
the HEAVY-DUTY carpet runner from Home Depot (or similar).

NOT the plastic stuff. It's very tough indoor-outdoor carpet, thin with
a rubber back. I bought a bunch for less than $3 / yard. It's about 3'
wide.

If you have decent but not too thick carpet padding, you can often
actually use carpet tacks (which are actually small nails) to tack
it down around the edges, every 6" or so. It doesn't hurt the carpet
and if you tack it down well, the heads of the tacks make a little
indentation so they're below carpet level and your feet never touch
them.

They can dig at that all they want. Fred actually managed to dig
through one in a doorway after many months of working at it. But what
the heck. It was about $2 to replace. Better than replacing $1000
worth of carpet.

The link below is a picture of the Home Depot heavy-duty carpet runner
in one of the doorways here. The little white things are Radio Shack
cable staples (two small nails with a plastic piece between). Those are
to make removal easier. But even with the plastic part, if your carpet
padding is good the nails hold them below the surface level of the
carpet so you don't feel them with your feet. If your carpet padding
is not so good, you can use carpet tacks rather than cable staples;
they're just a bit harder to remove.

http://s23.postimg.org/myrmag449/IMG_20140225_222617942.jpg

Lonny Eachus

[Posted in FML 8054]