Home grooming series – Bathtime

By Naturediet, Posted in Care & Advice

Home grooming series – Bathtime!

Continuing with our series on grooming your dog during lockdown, our colleague Lisa, a professional dog groomer, has shared this advice for bathing your dog.

Bathtime!

Bathing your dog is a relatively simple task, but just be prepared to get wet…because they love a good shake!

In simple steps,

  1. First, check your dog’s shampoo, most will dilute down, so make sure you read the bottle for instructions.  If you don’t have specific dog shampoo, a baby shampoo will work just as well.
  2. Wet your dog thoroughly with warm water.
  3. Use a small amount of shampoo then rub in until you have a good lather
  4. Rise thoroughly and repeat. The first shampoo will remove dirt, then the second will clean your dog’s hair and skin properly.
  5. When rinsing for the final time, you need to ensure that you have all the shampoo out – like humans, if you leave any in, it can cause skin irritations, flaky skins and sores.  Some handy tips to check
    1. Rub the hair again to see if you get any soap suds back
    2. Allow the dog to shake – this, on occasion, means you see suds reappear
    3. Listen to hair as you rinse – if it squeaks, there is no shampoo left.

On a silky coat, you might also want to use a conditioner as this will allow you to brush through more easily.

Dog Grooming

And then dry!

  1. Before using a hair dryer, squeeze out any excess water into a towel.  Avoid rubbing your dog down as it will make it harder to brush their hair – most dogs tend to be ok with a hair dryer as all groomers will use one.
  2. Only use a hair dryer on a low heat setting and keep a good distance away – at least 10cm or 4 inches away.
  3. Don’t brush to start with – you don’t want to over brush your dog after a bath
  4. You can see in the pictures that the hair is drying – when your dog has wet hair, it will appear crinkly. As hair dries, it will appear straight.
  5. Once dry use a brush. Brush from the bottom to the top, fully separating the hair all the way to the skin.  This will prevent matts.

Dog Grooming - Hair Dry

Look out for our next blog, which will be on grooming a double coated dog.