My fear of dog-bathing began when Miss M and I were bachelorettes together.
It was just me and my 70 pound dog.
We became a living comic-strip; a small girl trying to wrestle her 70 pound dog into the bath tub.
And much like any comic-strip, there were many tub-escapes, falls, and slippery dog-chasing.
Fast-forward a few years, I felt ready to tackle home dog baths again. But this time with more of a plan than just tossing Miss M in the tub. Luckily, our baths are no longer comic-strip worthy, and we even figured out how to bathe both pups at the same time.
This is what worked for us:
Training your Dog to Love the Bathtub
Given Miss M's earlier Coyote-and-Roadrunner antics, and the fact she hated even going near the bathroom, I wanted to teach her to love the bathtub. We would practice sitting together in the tub without water, and I would make it fun by giving her the best treats she ever tasted. To get her to enjoy exploring the bathtub by herself, I would randomly leave these amazing treats in the tub for her to find. This helped increase her positive associations with the tub as a good place.
Once she felt more comfortable with the tub, and she was actually in the tub with water, I would continuously give her these amazing treats as she was bathing.
After the bath, the pups are rewarded by getting a different"the best treats ever". Through these associations, the pups willingly take baths.
Using the Right Tools:
We always loved the self-serve dog wash places because they make things so easy, so we tried to set something up similarly in our own home. We bought a removable hand-held shower hose that makes it easy to hose down all those hard-to-reach areas, and rinse them off quickly. The hose also makes it really easy to rinse the hair off of the tub, and we use a hair-catcher on the drain so it doesn't get clogged. We keep all of our cleaning supplies in one place (those dorm caddies still come in handy!) which is easy to pull out. A vet tech told us putting cotton in their ears will prevent water from getting in and potentially getting an ear infection. We also keep wipes to clean inside their ears. We still need to get some non-slip things for the inside of the tub as Mr. B tends to slide around with his stubby little legs.
Save Time
Once our pups learned to love the bathtub, and we had our tools together, we learned a couple of ways to save time. Our treat association with the bathtub taught the pups to jump right in by themselves; we don't have to worry about picking up our big dogs. Since they now enjoy the baths, we save time by bathing them together. We also make it a team effort where E and I work together as an assembly line to wet-lather-rinse and dry. Though sometimes E does most of it so I can get photos.
We tend to bathe our pups about once a month because we have learned this about Chicago Grime and Miss M starts to smell like Fritos. If they are extra-dirty between baths, we wipe them down with a waterless shampoo spray.
These are things that work for us, what are some other bath tips you use for your pups?
Also:
Being preventative
We didn't know there were other benefits to this
This is what people are always asking us about
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