apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

We have a white Jack Russell who loves to get into mischief, so he gets a bath about once a week (daily in mud season). Fortunately, we made sure to equip the house with a utility sink big enough to hold him, so it's not too big a production!

Once a week! More if she gets in to mud or something.

I have two VERY large dogs and there is NO WAY I would deal with bathing them in the tub. Instead I wash one of them in the shower with me once a week with a handly spary nozzle.

I am clean, the dog is clean, and I can hose down the shower pretty darn easily with the nozzle. It just get's harder to do this in the winter ( a little more planning) because I tend to let them air dry - don't want them to be cold in the winter - so I must plan to dry them with a ahir dryer then.

Bath tub bathing a large dog? Heavens no. Small dog - maybe.

We have an eleven year old 95 pound Akita. She has had three baths in her whole life, when she got into something that was dirty or odiferous. Before you grab your noses and think that our home must be really stinky, I will tell you that not all dogs need frequent bathing.

"Water-dogs", like the very popular Labrador retriever (and most lab crossed with something else), tend to have very oily coats, which are helpful in their traditional task of retrieving the hunters dead birds from icy autumn ponds. Their oily fur can get quite smelly in modern apartments, requiring bathing. FOr many years, we shared our home with a lab-shepherd cross, and she did need baths...

If our current dog didn't come out to greet you when you arrived, and I'd vacuumed recently (her fur doesn't mat, but she sheds prodigiously) you would not know that we have a dog...

We have a Papillon and a little red mutt with Dachshund in her, and they both get bathed whenever they need it--usually once a week in the winter (because they're muddy and stinky) and every few weeks in the summer. I think it's fun to wash them, at least a lot more fun than washing cats is--I have an elderly cat who needs partial baths on occasion.

We have a shower with a glass door and a handheld shower head, so I just bring the dogs into the shower with me, bathe myself, put deep conditioner in my hair, and wash the dogs. By the time they're clean, my hair is conditioned and we're all ready to dry off. The Papillon hates baths but adores being clean--he prances even more than usual when he's freshly washed and dry. Little red mutt prefers being dirty to being clean.

I don't have a dog right now (because of apartment rules) but grew up with dogs. What I think is a better, more environmentally friendly way to wash your dog, and far less stressful than a bath, is to dry bath the dog. You can do this with baking soda, or buy some nice smelling stuff like this one on ETSY http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_gallery_2&listing_id=10540500
pretty much rub the baking soda into the dogs hair (preferably outside) and then brush it out. The baking soda sucks up the smelly oils and can even help prevent hot spots.

of course this would only work on your short-haired dogs

My pup gets a bath after swimming in the various "creeks" and lakes in our area. Or after time at the farm...so pretty much every weekend in the summer. Since it's hot, I rinse her down outside with the water hose. She loves it. In the winter, she (now) willingly hops into the bath and gets a full-on soapy treatment. We use the baking soda trick, too, and finish off the dry bath with a good Furmination.

Keep in mind that bathing your dog too often can cause itchy, flaky skin and can lead to bad scratching which in the worse case can lead to sore spots and a possible trip to the vet!

If you have to bathe often make sure you use a very, very mild shampoo with the proper ph and rinse very well so there's no reside left on their delicate skin.

We wash our Shiba 2-3 times a week with a super gentle organic shampoo that our vet assured us would be okay to use up to 4 times a week. Our puppy loves taking baths, his twice daily brushings, and having his nails filed (not cut!). He's not great when we use the hair dryer on him though, he always gets a little scared by the noise.