We bathe our pets for a lot of different reasons. Most of us was just want to bathe our dogs to make them smell good and be clean so they can come in the house, but other times we have to bathe dogs for skin problems or medical conditions. So I'm going to briefly touch upon our shampooing options!
What Skin Conditions Are Soothed With Dog Bathing?
Let's start with the medical side of it. The most common things we see are staph infections of the skin and a yeast infections of the skin. Those are very, very frequently seen, especially this time of year. With the spring and summer in South Louisiana, our pets commonly have allergies. That leads to irritated skin, that leads to the need for these medicated shampoos. We have a couple different shampoo options available here at The Waggin' Train.
If you are bathing with a medicated shampoo, your veterinarian is likely going to have you do it more frequently than you might think. I know when I'm prescribing either one of our shampoos, I'm telling owners to bathe every second or third day. Yes, second or third day. That's a lot of bathing, but why? Because we're doing it as an adjunct way to treat a skin infection, so doing it once a week or once a month is not going to anywhere nearly enough, so when we're dealing with things like this it's going to be pretty frequent.
What Products Do We Use For Regular Dog Bathing?
For more routine bathing, I typically grab for this aloe and oatmeal shampoo. The scent is not the reason I grab for it, although it does smell pretty nice. The main reason I like it is because it's soap-free. I can tell you, ever since I was young I've heard probably the same things you've heard—"Oh, you can't bathe your dog too often, you'll dry their skin out." Yeah, okay, there's truth to that, so why am I ignoring it? Because when it's a soap-free shampoo, you're not going to dry their skin out.
When you dry their skin out, you're talking about a detergent-based shampoo. Imagine if, well, let's look at us for example, if you bathe every night, which most of us do, and you use a soap based shampoo—you're going to strip the oils out of your hair, right? It happens all the time, that's why we use conditioners and things like that to put the oils back in our hair. Well, we often don't do that with our dogs. If you bathed them with a soap-based shampoo such as, let's say you use Dawn dish washing soap, because a lot of people do...if you use that, great, it's fine. It's not going to cause any problems, but you are going to strip the oils out of their skin, thus drying it out.
What Happens to Flea Medications When We Bathe Our Dogs?
One thing to remember, if you're using a topical flea medicine, guess where those spread? Yep, the oil layer of the skin. So if you bathe with a soap-based shampoo and you do it well, you're going to strip the oils off and you probably just said bye-bye to that $15, $20, or maybe $25 flea product that you put on that's supposed to last a month. Believe me, we see animals come back in and their owners say, "Well, I put on [filling in the blank] every month and this dog still has fleas. Why? It's not working." No, it works, but you can't wash it off.
Soap-free is what the selling point is for me when it comes our oatmeal and aloe shampoo. I can bathe a dog every day. I can bathe a dog multiple times a day if I want to, and because it's soap-free, it's leaving the oil on their skin alone. I will not wash off their flea medication. I will not dry out their skin. That's my go-to. This is what sits on the shelf at the house of Scott Broussard and when I need to bathe my dogs, it's nine times out of ten with this.
What is a Product You Recommend For Dog Allergies?
One other small step up from that, if you have a dog that is suffering from allergies, we have a shampoo for that! Our particular brand is called "Comfort". It has an antihistamine in it. It is also soap-free, but it has an antihistamine in it that can help control itching. It will not last very long, but you can get an effect for maybe a day or two to kind of soothe that animal's skin and provide relief there.
Really, last case, which you're not going to see here because I don't sell them, would be flea and tick shampoo. They're very commonly used. You can buy them over the counter just about anywhere pet products are sold. I'm not a huge fan because they don't last very long. Most of those guys are soap-based, and that's fine. It's not the enemy—you just can't do it too often, but the reason I don't carry them is because they just don't last. There are too many good products on the market that are either oral or topical and will take care of fleas and ticks for a month, if not months at a time, where a shampoo that does that is just not worth it.
If you have any questions, let us know!
-Dr. Scott
To schedule an appointment call (337) 223-9581
