How to Bathe A Dog Or Cat

Bathing a pet can be stressful for both the pet owner as well as the pet, but following these easy instructions will make bathing your pet more fun for everyone involved.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• 2 Bath Towels
• Shampoo
• Conditioner
• Eye Onitment
• Q-Tips

1. Gather up 2 bath towels, shampoo, condtioner, and the eye ointment and take these items to the sink and place them on the counter. Before you sit your pet in the sink, there is something you can do first before you begin bathing your pet, especially if you are bathing a cat.

2. Before you go get your pet, start the water gently running, and make sure it is lukewarm. Then go get Fluffy or Spot and take him/her to the sink and gently place in the sink. Then talk to your pet in a gentle relaxing voice and start wetting down the entire body. Don't turn the water on full force. Just a slow trickle is good. Once the fur is wet, get about a quarter size dallop of shampoo and lather in good. Rinse the shampoo out thoroughly and apply a quarter size dallop of conditioner and work through the fur and rinse well.

3. To wash the face, you can wet a washcloth and clean the face and eyes so you will not have to pour water on to their face. After you have throughly rinsed out all of the water from their fur, wrap one towel around them and then sit them down on the other towel and gently rub their fur and dry them off as much as possible.

Tips & Warnings

• One of the best things you can do is ask your vet for some eye ointment to use during baths just to keep the eyes from getting irritated from the shampoo. It is called NBX (Neobacymyx)
• Everytime I bathe my pets, I personally always use Johnson's Baby Shampoo. It is gentle and very mild and leaves the coat shiny and soft.
• Don't forget to clean their ears out after each bath. All you need are Q-tips and baby oil. Place the Q-tip down in the ear canal but do not go far down in the ear. Just cleaning around the top part that is exposed is good. To clean down inside the ear, gently place the Q-tip inside the ear that you have dipped in baby oil and just go far enough down like you would when you clean your own ears.
• When the weather turns cold, it is best not to bath your animals at home, unless you have a dryer that you can use and get the animal completely dry. Remember that your pets get cold also.
• Be sure that your thoroughly rinse all of the shampoo out because if any shampoo residue is left in, this will cause the skin to become irritated and red.

[cb4me]

on 9/10/2009 Good tips, thanks!