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Do You Know What's in Your Dog Shampoo?
By Bark n Bath


It is important to choose a dog shampoo which addresses your dog’s grooming needs without exposing these sensitive animals to artificial perfumes or detergents.

In today's modern society, we often expose our companion animals to a variety of artificial perfumes, insecticides, and detergents found in common grooming products and treatments. While these products usually do their jobs effectively, some of their ingredients can cause both allergic and nervous reactions in dogs. You are left with a squeaky clean, flea free, pina-colada scented dog that itches like the dickens, and will often rush off to find some soothing mud to cool her skin and remove the overwhelming perfumed scent from her coat. What to do?

When searching for the best product to bathe your dog with, look for one that is created to clean effectively while holistically complementing your dog's health. A holistic approach examines and considers the whole, instead of just the individual aspects, of any given subject or creature. After all, the most important thing a dog shampoo can do is to CLEAN your dog without causing dry, itchy skin, or making her smell like a car freshener. It is often the extra, added ingredients (usually placed in pet products for us, not our pets), such as artificial fragrances, lather boosters, and botanical additives, that can cause more problems than they solve. Examining the ingredients listed on your pet’s shampoo may help you avoid these problems.

The first ingredient listed in pet shampoo following water is usually a detergent, which can be created from a variety of sources. Detergents come in all strengths and pet shampoos often contain detergents such as SLS or SLA which are stronger than they need to be in order to clean your dog’s coat. Consumers have been conditioned to believe that their dog’s hair and skin needs to “squeak” to be really clean, but this is just an indicator that there are no oils left in your dog’s coat and skin. At this point, your dog’s skin will be very dry after bathing, and more likely to feel itchy to her.

Detergents can also produce a lot of lather, and it is a misconception that amount of

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lather indicates cleaning power. The lather is there to reassure us that the shampoo is doing something, but can be difficult to rinse out completely, providing another opportunity for itchy skin after bathing. Shampoos made with real, ph-balanced soaps with retained glycerin clean effectively, are affordable, easier to rinse, and won’t over dry your dog’s skin. Following such shampoos with a dilute apple cider vinegar rinse is recommended in hard water areas.

Towards the end of the ingredients listing you will often find “fragrance” listed. This innocuous term conceals a plethora of possible ingredients, protected from disclosure by patents. A variety of “natural” scents can only be reproduced with artificial ingredients, so buyer beware of any “natural” shampoo scented with raspberry, cherry, coconut, banana, baby powder, and many more. These fragrances can cause skin irritation in both you and your dog, as well as assaulting your dog’s finely tuned nose. Look for a dog shampoo containing pure essential oils, the only truly “natural” scents. These oils are created by distilling the essence of plants, providing wonderfully true to nature aromas.

Some essential oils are also reported as possessing other beneficial qualities as well. A product containing pure essential oils will list them as such, usually with their botanical Latin name included. It is especially important to note here that you should never use a fragranced or essential oil containing shampoo on cats, unless specifically directed to do so by your veterinarian. While most dogs respond extremely well to appropriate levels of essential oils, cats cannot tolerate these oils and will easily become seriously ill when exposed to them.

You may need to do some research into dog shampoo ingredients in order to find the shampoo that is right for your dog, and never accept a product from a company which will not disclose it’s ingredients to you. Just remember, the next time you find yourself in the grocery aisle considering a foamy cherry scented shampoo for your dog, ask yourself who your dog's bath is really for- her or you?

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© Bark n Bath. Reprinted by permission only.

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