Bath Day Got Easier Once We Switched Shampoos

Bath day in this house used to take two people and I live alone. Biscuit is a 6-year-old blue-nose pit bull, 58 pounds, and she is not a dog who stands still while you aim a sprayer at her back. She would plant her feet, lean her shoulder into the tub wall, and look at me like I had betrayed her personally. The washing part was never the problem. The problem was everything that came after, when she would spend the rest of the evening scratching at her neck and licking her front paws on the rug.

For a long time I used whatever dog shampoo was on the grocery store shelf. It smelled like a hospital and it took three rinses before the water ran clear. A day or two after each bath the scratching would start up again, sometimes worse than before. Albuquerque is dry, and I had decided the itch was just something she lived with. My vet is the one who told me to stop guessing and read what was actually in the bottle.

That is how I ended up with earthbath Oatmeal & Aloe Itch Relief Dog Shampoo. A woman at the dog park off Montgomery mentioned it first, and then I found it on the shelf at the pet supply place on my side of town. What made me pick it up was the label. Colloidal oatmeal, aloe vera, olive oil, plant-derived cleansers, and no soap. It is pH balanced, which I did not fully understand at the time, and it comes in one 16 ounce bottle.

The routine has not changed. Biscuit gets a bath every three weeks, in the bathtub with the rubber mat so her feet do not slide, using the handheld sprayer. I wet her down, work the shampoo through her coat, and then I let the lather sit for a full five minutes before I rinse. That five minutes was the hardest habit to build, because standing still in a tub is not her idea of a good time. I bring a tub of peanut butter in with me, the kind with no xylitol, and she licks the wall of it while the clock runs.

The rinse takes as long as the wash. I go over her twice, down to the skin at the shoulders and around the base of the tail where the coat is thickest. A full rinse matters more than people think, and it is the part I used to rush.

I noticed the change after the second or third bath, not the first. If you are expecting overnight, you will quit before it has a chance to work.

Here is what actually changed. About six or seven weeks in, after the second and third baths, I noticed she was not scratching through the evening anymore. She still licks her paws sometimes, and she still has dry skin in February when the heat runs all day. The shampoo soothes her skin. It does not fix what causes the itch, and I want to be plain about that, because I have spent money on things that promised more than that.

The scent is vanilla and almond. It is soft enough that I do not smell it on her after a couple of days, which I prefer. Some shampoos leave a dog smelling like a candle aisle. This one smells clean while it is working and then it is gone. The coat comes out soft too, and it stays soft, which was not true of the grocery store bottle.

What I like most is that it does not strip her. Biscuit has short, dense hair, and after a bath with the old shampoo it felt rough to the hand for days. With earthbath it feels like her coat again by the time she is dry. The bottle lives under the bathroom sink, and 16 ounces have lasted me a long while at one bath every three weeks.

I also want to be honest about what a shampoo cannot do. If your dog is licking paws raw or has bald patches, that is a vet conversation, not a bath product. For us, the shampoo is bath day and nothing else. The daily itch support in this house is a separate chew I give her with breakfast, and the two do different jobs. I never want to credit one for the other's work. Ask your vet before you change anything about a dog with skin trouble.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy one bottle and give it a month before you decide. Not a week. A month, which for us is about one and a half baths. If you already bathe your dog more often than I do, you will know sooner, but I have never seen the point of washing a dog that often unless the dog has rolled in something.

I would tell you the sitting time is the whole thing. Five minutes with the lather on, then rinse until the water runs clear. Skip that and you have wasted the bottle and an afternoon.

I would tell you a rubber mat for the tub does more for bath day than any shampoo will. Biscuit stopped fighting me the day her feet stopped sliding. The shampoo did not calm her down. The mat did.

And I would tell you that if you are standing in the aisle reading labels and you cannot pronounce half of them, put that bottle down. earthbath is the first one I have read all the way through and understood, and after eighteen months it is still the one under my sink.