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Old July 9th, 2009, 04:57 PM
im_nomad im_nomad is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2008
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Bathing: does anyone else go through such an ordeal?


Ok, i'm getting to the point where I may never bathe my dog again. She is having some itchy skin problems so the vet gives her shampoo to use "bathe her as often as you can, daily etc"......... This vet has obviously never met my dog, because the way she acts when I try to bathe her you'd think someone was trying to inflict the worse kind of pain on her. She is not sore or hurting anywhere at this point, and she's acted like this even when she's not had skin problems, but the vet said the bath & shampoo should be soothing (yeah right). Tonight she looked a little scaly, so I decided to give her a "soothing" bath, and now I feel like I need a triple martini and some soothing of my own.

She's always been a little like this with not liking the bath thing so much, but has gotten worse it seems the past year or so. I do not make an ordeal of this, I go up to start the bath, and calmly call her upstairs in that pleasant sing-songy voice. All through the bath I rub her belly, and use soothing "good girl" sounds, plenty of praise etc. I try to make it as short as possible, and avoid her face and ears if they don't need it. The past few baths (not daily btw, too much of an ordeal) have only involved washing from her "waist" down pretty much.

Regardless, throughout the bath, she shakes and shivers and on occasion pees or poops the bath and generally acts as if the world is ending with her antics. When done, I let her jump out and get a quick as all possible rub down with a towel, again lots of "good girl!!". After which she goes completely ape-****, running around the house like she's possessed, rubbing herself all over the furniture, barking, running the stairs and banging into stuff even, and you guessed it, messing all over the floors. Tonight, she decided to get that part over with BEFORE the bath, nice puddle outside the bathroom door on the carpet, but made sure to save a BM for the floor post-bath, which she took with her several places through the house (she had recently done both pre-bath).

Most times I can't even get near her to put her collar back on, the barking and acting like she's been cornered starts.

Can a simple bath really be THAT much torture for a dog ? I'm at the end of my rope.
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