Warning about bathing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roH9EDUu7xU&feature=em-uploademail

It may only happen to dogs prone to eczema...or sensitive skin. I know I've let Jose` dry without blow drying him and sometimes it takes a long time because he has quite a dense coat. Nothing ever happened. But it could. And when I think back to my Lab, Bonnie and how she'd swim in the lake and take all day, hours and hours to dry through and through. Nothing ever happened to her either.

Huh, that's really weird, and seems to me very rare. I've always let all my dogs drip dry (I do towel them very well though), and NEVER seen or heard of such a thing before! My childhood companion was a mostly outdoor dog, hosed off outside and drip dried, never seen it. Jinj sadly can stay wet on cooler days the entire day, never seen this. Enda will play in her fun pool on really hot sunny days, I'll get her all wet top-bottom even, never seen it. Not saying I wont take it into serious consideration, but I do wonder if it has something to do with location, as she pointed out towards the end of the video?

I don't have sound.... what are they talking about?

This trainer's dog developed bad eczema which seemed to follow a bath, after which, the dog stayed damp for over a day. She didn't know this might happen. At one point in the video, she puts it in words like..."it rotted the skin." I don't know that that is what happened. Anyhow, the dog had very irritated sores.

What I'm thinking is that perhaps that dog was especially prone to this, having very sensitive skin. Or.....it's not easy to prove that the dampness is what caused the eczema or if it could have been only one contributing factor.

Anyhow, what W.S. and I are saying is that we've had dogs that stayed wet for long hours and nothing happened. So, perhaps the warning from this gal is over-reaching because probably it is not going to happen to most dogs....that her dog may have been particularly prone to dermatitis type things.

But...it probably isn't a bad idea, just the same...to dry the dog off as soon as reasonable. (just as a general thing)

Bathing as in...shampoo? Like, maybe she didn't rinse well enough, harsh shampoo stayed in the damp undercoat and irritated the skin? Just a thought.

But I've heard of it, definitely. Usually not common, though, unless there's a thick undercoat, sensitivity to something, or the dog was just soaking wet for hours and hours on end without even a towel dry.

We learned this in the grooming salon. Dogs with thick under coats need to be dried THOROUGHLY, because their undercoat can mildew and infect the skin. Not sure of the validity, because I never saw it happen, but I always dried them. It makes a lot of sense.

I always heard of this as 'hot spots' dogs get from not being dry and getting skin infections. It causes hair loss and a general 'rotting' smell.

This is why I get Maf to shave Dekka right down in the summer. She spends so much time in and out of water that she has gotten some really nasty hotspots.

I've seen that happen twice. Once with a dog that the owner self bathed and then didn't dry (it was a husky mix - think he already had irritated skin due to allergies) and then with my friend's lab. They had to shave the lab's coat down because it was molding and she developed some nasty hot spots around her neck.

Yes, we see that all the time, with the coated dogs. I always rinse, and rinse again, and rinse some more to get the shampoo out (the biggest issue is usually shampoo left in) and in some cases we use surgical scrub on bad spots (a few dogs get it around their cheeks/necks/ears). One dog has an actual allergy to shampoo which does it.

It's usually worse in dogs that swim in ponds and then don't dry out properly, they get that bacteria growing, so owners learn the hard way to hose them off after they swim and then keep them out of the water after 3 or so in the afternoon so they can totally dry and aren't staying damp too long.