To Lather or Not To Lather

How to Keep Your Pet Safe During Bath Time:

Keep Pet Safe During Bath Time Did you know that every time you lather up your pet you could in fact be introducing a whole round of toxins into their body? Probably not! The reality is that many commercial products for cleaning our pets are filled with big no no’s. Let’s dive into shampoos.

I’ve heard more than once that people will use human brand and human grade shampoos on their pooches, either because it’s all they have available or because they like the smell. Here’s the problem with this mentality. A lot of these human shampoos are filled with ingredients we cannot pronounce, preservatives, and chemicals that don’t belong within ten feet of your dog (and your scalp) let alone on their skin. For instance, a popular human shampoo contains artificial colors (we’ve got to make sure it’s pretty coming out of the bottle), artificial fragrances (it must smell good, even if we have to amplify it with chemicals), and mineral oil (not the good kind of oil) just to name a few. All of these are huge dangers for our pets.

To Lather or Not To Lather

Method For Washing Our Pet

Let’s think about the method by which we wash our pets. We put a dollop of cleanser either in our hands or directly on the coat and then start to lather up. While we may think everything gets washed away when we rinse, we couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact the minute we start lathering a shampoo into our animal’s coat, is the beginning of that product being absorbed into the body. The skin is the largest organ in both humans and dogs. It is one of the many ways our body both releases and absorbs substances. Through the skin, the shampoo we put on our pets gets sucked inside and into the bloodstream. Suddenly all of those artificial additives that we thought were getting washed away are now inside the body, affecting the circulatory, musculoskeletal, and nervous systems.

Washing Pet For a detailed list of what to watch out for, check out an article written in Dogs Naturally Magazine linked right here: http://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/20-ingredients-dont-want-dogs-shampoo/ . This topic is covered in detail and you’ll walk away with a wealth of knowledge of what needs to be avoided. With all this talk of what NOT to use, you may be wondering what in the world is even safe anymore. Some of our favorite products are Tropiclean shampoos; they have only a handful of ingredients, all of which are easy to pronounce. A few other great options are Dr. Harvey’s pet shampoo and Paw Earth. Both of these have a bit of variety but all are certified organic. Whichever you end up choosing, just be sure to read the label, and if the ingredients you don’t know outnumber the ones you do, it’s probably best to move on to the next one!