How to Give Your Dog a Flea Dip

Video transcription

Hi, I'm Dr. Laurel Leach, and I'm with Stuart today, to talk to you about how to dip your dog. Now, there are several reasons that you might want to dip your dog. It might be for flea control, it might be for parasite or mange control. There's one of the manges that we dip the, use a dip for the dogs. And those dips are usually done at the veterinary clinic. Because it is a medicated dip that shouldn't stay inside the hospital. But some veterinarians may prescribe it out. Now, as an aside, if it's a flea dip, any more, we don't use, we don't do dipping in the conventional sense of the word. We have some medication and oral pills, will kill fleas in four hours. So, your veterinarian as that product that's faster, it's safer and it sure is a whole lot less hassle for you. But if there is some reason that you end up having to dip your dog, here's how you're going to do it. First of all, the first step is bathing the dog, and it's not because the dog has to be clean. But the dog is naturally going to repel water. If we pour water on his coat, it's going to drip right off. We want the dip to get down to the level of the skin. So, step one, is going to be just give him a general bath with a general cleaning shampoo. One that's pH balanced for dogs. And you know, that is hypoallergenic and pH balanced for dogs. We want to protect the dog's eyes. So, here, we're going to put eye ointment on the eye, and this protects the eye. Because we don't want any splatter, or scatter from either soap or the dip, to get in the eye. So, the eyes have to be protected before the bath, with some eye ointment. Your veterinarian can prescribe that for you. Also, we want to make sure that water doesn't go down into the ears. And so, you're going to put a cotton ball in the ear. Remember to take it out afterwards, otherwise your dog will have a pretty bad ear infection. So, protect the eyes, protect the ears. And the first step, is to bathe the dog. And then, on the face, I just gently use a small wash cloth, or something to wipe around these areas. Of course, the collar would come off, we don't want water trapped in the folds, underneath the neck. So, we've bathed the dog, we've rinsed the dog. So, we have a damp dog that is clean and pretty much damp, damp dry. But the coat you know, is wet down to the skin. O.k., so, the next step, is you've had, or you've prepared your dip before hand. The dip has instructions, usually it's sold as a concentrate. Meaning,it has to be mixed with water. So, you, according to the package instructions, you mix with the amount of concentrate, with water, as directed. And you mix it up well. And generally, for this next step, you put some gloves on to protect your skin. Because you don't know if you would be sensitive to the chemicals in the dip, either. O.k., so, you've got your wet dog, you've got your dip made up. And now, we have to take a small step into, into, sorry. And now, we have to take a small step into believing that what we have here is a basin. Because Stewart doesn't fit into the basin, the dip that I have. But basically, the concept that you want to do, is you want to put the pet into the basin. So, that might be your bath tub, it might be a wash tub. And then, you start putting the dip on his coat. And you're soaking him thoroughly down to the skin, in the dip. So, you want the dip everywhere. If he's sitting in the basin, you want the dip between his toes, you want it on his belly, you want it all over here. You're going to take a wash cloth, and you're going to rinse this area. And then, you're going to just apply it gently, again, avoiding the eyes and the ears, onto his face. And then, make sure that it's wet on any skin folds that he might have, down in through here. This is also a really good time to check your pet for bumps, lumps, other things that you might not have noticed otherwise. And the last step, second and last step, is he has to drip-dry. We don't want to put blow dryers, we don't want to blow that dip off the hair shaft. Because then, it's gone, and we just went through all that effort to put it on. So, the pet must drip-dry, and that's how the dips works. Then, of course, make sure you don't have any cotton balls in the ear, and you should be good to go. I'm Dr. Laurel Leach, this is Stuart, and we hope you enjoyed us for how to dip a dog.