How often do you bathe your dog/s?

[Twisterdog]

The entire bathing debate boils down to this - matching the Ph of the shampoo with the Ph of the skin and hair. Humans and dogs do not have the same Ph. Therefore, you should never use human shampoo on a dog. Professional grooming shampoo is Ph formulated to match the canine Ph. You could wash a dog every week - or theoretically every day - with a properly Ph balanced shampoo and it would be fine. If you use human shampoo, baby shampoo, or cheap dog shampoo from Walmart or the grocery store ... you are stripping away the oils from your dogs coat faster than it can replenish them. Therefore, dry skin and coat. Done properly, you can bathe your dog as often as you want. I groom many, many dogs that come in every week, every two weeks, every three weeks for baths. Their coats are beautiful.

My dogs get baths whenever (a) they start to get stinky and (b) I feel ambitious enough to wash all ten of them. These things generally coincide about once a month.

ALL dogs have oil glands. ALL dogs produce natural oils in their skin. People have sweat glands that use water from their bodies to detoxify and control body heat; dogs and cats have oil glands that exude oil for the same purposes. Each primary (guard) hair of the coat has an associated oil gland. Many dogs grow more than one type of fibre in their coats, the softer, finer fibres are known as secondary (undercoat) fibres and may not have an associated oil gland. Demodex (mange) in a dog is caused by tiny, cigar-shaped, eight-legged mites that actually reside and feed in the hair follicle and oil glands of the skin.