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I think in many cases the bad dog odor comes from a poor diet...not all for sure but I can usually tell when a dog is eating junk brand dog food by the way they smell.

 

I do all grooming myself at home.

 

Meg gets bathed more than any dog I've ever had. Her fur seems to be a magnet for mud so anytime it rains when no one is home to bring the dogs in right away she gets a bath before coming in for the night (they have two dog houses, but mud is more fun!). Bear (lab) I can towel off and he's good to go. Meg...I rinse to get most of the mud off, shampoo and rinse again to get more mud off, condition and rinse yet again to get still more mud off. I have no idea why it clings to her so; her coat is really not all that thick. Just a quick rinse will not do the trick though. I'd rather take the time to bathe her than have mud all over the house. She does not towel dry well either...I have to blow dry her or she'll still be damp in the morning.

 

I don't shave her, but I do trim the fur on her back end so it doesn't collect debris or matt. She hates being brushed back there so our compromise is she has to sit still while I trim her butt every few months. She also gets a few unusually long strands of fur around her face/ears too. The vet calls it her 'wild' look. I'll trim those every once in a while too.

 

I brush as needed...not much in the winter or late summer. A fe times a week in spring and fall.

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I shave bellies every summer on the long coated dogs so that when they want to cool down (ie lie in the doggie pool) the water gets to their skin more readily and quickly. I don't shave anything else.

 

Most of my dogs seem to amass undercoat as they age. For most of her life, Piper had such a thin coat, but now approaching 10 years she has a massively thick undercoat and I had to brush matts out of her chest for the first time in her life this year. Tweed gets very poofy in the winter months and takes a long time to blow his coat. TWooie sheds like a GSD, in clumps that I can pull out over the course of a couple of days and he's done. Wootie is the same but it goes more slowly.

 

I don't have to shave Dexter's belly/chest as he scratches all the hair off with his seasonal Spring time allergies :( He has virtually no undercoat to speak of, but I suppose like the rest of them he will get some over time.

 

I have always been led to believe that overall shaving does more harm than good for long haired dogs: http://www.veterinaryinsider.com/public/Thinking-About-Shaving-Your-Dogs-Hair-Coat-For-The-Summer-Think-Again.cfm

 

I rarely bathe my dogs. I find that they only really start to smell when their collars remain damp for long periods, ie in the rain, and the musty smell might transfer to their coats. I do use Unicoat on them all, especially in the winter. While they are pretty clean dogs, 6 of of them, wet and crammed into my small house does leave a bit of a lingering odour (on both them and the dog beds they get wet). But on the whole, our version of a bath is swimming at the old quarry, or the beach.

 

RDM

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Usually, doggy smell is seborrhea to some degree, from poor nutrition, allergy, irritation, or age. Sometimes, on a dog that is otherwise odorless, you will notice doggy odor when they have gotten hot, playing in the sun. That's normal skin oils heating up, and the dogs smell will be back to normal when it cools off. We used to have a client that wanted her dog bathed every time it exhibited this type of odor. We figured she had more money than sense.

 

I brush mine enough for them to remember it is one of the weird things us humans are prone to do. I bathe them only as needed due to whatever got rolled in this time. Mine have medium coats that shed almost everything, with very little undercoat. My husband thought the puppy needed a bath while I was gone yesterday and he didn't even look for shampoo. He assumed we didn't even have any. He just hosed him off.

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My grooming regimine for the border collies is intense. I pluck when their hineys become pluckable. I brush every now and then when they're blowing coat (ie when they're pluckable and I've plucked until they look annoyed). I bathe if they roll in poo and a baby wipe isn't sufficient. :lol: They smell nice actually.

 

The only one I shave is the non-border collie.

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