Our dog is one of the most important things in our life. That is why it is important to know how often to bathe your pet. For him to be happy and content, it is essential that his hygiene is done regularly and effectively.
Bathing serves to protect the animal’s skin and coat from multiple diseases and fungi. If we don’t bathe our dog frequently enough, it will smell and look bad. However, daily or continuous cleaning is also not recommended. Complete washings, using shampoo and continued to make our dog’s skin dry. In addition, they can change the pH and oils of your skin.
So that you do not have problems and your pet is clean and beautiful, in this article we explain how often you should bathe your dog.
How often to bathe my dog?
Instructions
There is no general washing frequency for all dogs. The times you should bathe your dog depends on the abundance and type of hair it has. The average frequency of washing according to the type of hair is usually the following:
- Little hair or no hair: the recommended thing is once every 6 or 8 weeks.
- More or less abundant hair: once every 4 or 6 weeks.
- Very abundant hair: In this case it is recommended to bathe it once every 4 weeks.
- As you can see, the aspect that determines how often you should bathe your dog is the length of its hair. The coat contains natural oils (just like human hair) that help keep them healthy. Therefore, if you wash it often, it is likely that it will lose them and this will affect their health.
- The dogs that should be bathed the most are those with longer hair. This is so because they tend to give off more odors than the others. Apart from washing them approximately every month, it is important to take other care of their fur. For example, brushing is very important. Combing your hair frequently increases the blood flow in the capillaries. This makes them shiny and healthier, and also helps reduce odor significantly.
- As mentioned, it is extremely important to respect the bath times for each dog. But there are situations in which it is necessary to bathe your dog even if you have recently done so. This type of event can be, for example, when our pet has gotten into the mud during a walk. Another example can be when they are stained with any type of oil, paint or any type of fat. When some type of harmful substance falls that can affect the health of the animal. And, finally, in summer or in areas where it is hotter than our dog is used to, it is necessary to give him a bath to lower his temperature.
- If you have washed your dog correctly according to the prescribed times and you brush his hair well frequently and, even so, his coat is not healthy, you should go to a veterinarian. Some diseases or infections make animals smell bad, lose their shine, and don’t look good. If you have washed your dog and it shows these characteristics, it is best that you take it for a review.
Finally, we leave you with some of the most widespread myths regarding dog baths:
The bathroom and the water in the ears
Some people make the excuse that if they bathe their dog too much, water will get in his ears. We should not worry too much about this. It is very difficult for our dog to get water in the ears during the bath. This will only happen if we point the head directly into the ear.
When we wash it normally, the excess water that may remain in the ears will disappear when the animal shakes its head.
Humidity is bad for them
Obviously if our dog remains wet for a very long time, this will harm him. But this happens both when you bathe him at home and when he gets wet in the park with a sprinkler or gets into the sea. But this is not a reason to stop washing our pet.
For this reason, it is very important that after each wash we thoroughly dry all your hair. Above all, in dogs that have more folds in their skin, special care must be taken so that all of their skin is completely dry.
If it smells like perfume, other dogs won’t go near it
This excuse is also often used to not bathe our dogs. It is true that an excess of perfume can make other dogs move away from ours. But if he smells excessively like a dog, it will also make others stay away from him.
Dogs’ sense of smell is much more sensitive than that of humans, so even if our pet smells like shampoo, dogs will be able to smell its natural fragrance under the perfume that we have put on it.
