Having spent quite a few years in Chicago, there are times when the manual scraping just don’t work. Ideally for me, I have always tried to catch it in time before ice over, but there were many times when that wasn’t possible.

For me, salt has always worked quite well. It is cheap, moderately effective and makes for excellent weight when stored on the back end of a RWD vehicle.

I don’t know too much about deicers, nor do I have any pets. But I can see your concern.