Don't Bath My Pack Mate!

[DanielPW]

I'm not sure if the Grooming forum is the right place for this question, but since it involves bathing, I will start it here. If it needs to go to another forum, let me know which one and I will address the question/issue there.

I have three dogs. They are very well behaved and get along with each other extremely well. They eat together, play together and sleep together. We do not bath them frequently, but we would like to bath them about 4 times a year. Mostly because we take them to play at dog parks or in the lake and they always find really stinky stuff to roll in.

Here's the problem. All three dogs are really well behaved when we bath them. They aren't excited about getting a bath, but they don't fight it and the bath process itself goes really well. The problem comes after the bath. My dog, Sarah, who is usually the Alpha in the group, always wants to beat up my dog Bama, who is the most timid in the group. This only occurs after a bath. At no other time does she show any aggression to Bama or any other dog. It's to the point where when bath time starts; Bama hides and begins to shake all over. Not because she is afraid of the bath, she actually loves the warm water and the attention; she is just terrified because she knows Sarah is going to jump her.

We have tried bathing them on separate days. This just resulted in Sarah jumping Bama on the day Sarah got a bath and on the day Bama got a bath. We have tried taking Bama away from the house, bathing Sarah and bringing Bama back. She still jumps Bama. We've tried taking Sarah away while we bath Bama and bring her back after. As soon as she returns, she jumps Bama.

Interestingly enough, she does not have any problem with the bathing of our third dog, Hobo.

I am truly baffled. I have no idea what is causing this behavior and as a result I have not idea how to begin correcting it.

Has anyone seen or heard of this? Any suggestions on its cause or steps I might take to correct the behavior. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[emmabeth]

I think that altering the scents of the dogs in question puts Sarah in the position where she feels more vulnerable, less secure in her position within the group, she attacks Bama because Bama both smells wrong AND acts worried (for good reason).

I would not bathe these two - if you need to, spot clean using pure water and a cloth rather than any soaps.

[DanielPW]

Thanks Emma! That is what we have been doing. But, I'd really like to correct this behavior. My dogs are a big part of our family. They live in the house, with a doggie door providing access to the yard. Their beds are in our bedroom. They go on trips with us. While I recognize that they are really proud when they have their stink on, it would be nice to have them not be stinky on occassion.

If anyone has any suggestions on modifying this behavior, I'm all ears.

[emmabeth]

Really, the best way to remove that doggy odour is to groom REALLY well getting out dead undercoat and stimulating the skin to improve blood flow, and feeding a raw diet.

I live with five dogs and only two of these are bathed regularly because, with one being a Tibetan terrier and the other an afghan x saluki, they both have unnaturally heavy, fluffy coats and dirt sticks to them.

The other three are very rarely bathed and they all eat a raw diet - my house smells unbelieveably NON doggy (and thats not just me saying that, thats non-dog type people expressing their surprise at the lack of smell!) and they sleep IN my bed too.

What you feed really does have a huge effect on odour, with the cheaper grain based foods and those full of colourings and flavourings/sugars causing in my opinion a huge amount of the 'doggy stink' that most people assume is normal for dogs.