Anyone who'd owned a lab will know just how bad it can get. We've got a yellow lab and have moved somewhere with a dark grey carpet - a terminal combination! The 8980 keeps on top of it, so I don't have to vacuum every day. It does get stuck at times, but that's just a matter of fixing the environment. The dust emptying facility on the base station is massively useful, as even when she's shedding, I don't have to empty the vacuum often. My biggest beef with it is that it doesn't seem to really maintain a map in its memory that would allow it to figure out things like short cuts when returning back to base, or to remember where the base is if it didn't start on it.