Dog Dandruff Treatment
August 16, 2011
Knowing your Way around Dog Dandruff Treatment
Do dogs really have dandruff too?
If every time you look at your dog, you can’t help but notice with a bit of consternation how there is all this flaky powdery dandruff on what should be beautiful lustrous fur, you have a problem on your hands that you need to address. Luckily, there is help at hand. Dog dandruff treatment isn’t that hard to come by if the problem isn’t a particularly entrenched one.
With people, dandruff becomes visible almost immediately – as soon as it turns up. With dogs though, the problem can remain hidden for quite a while. You probably get to know that there’s a problem when your dog scratches himself a lot. You could have him checked out for fleas of course; but barring that, usually, the problem is dandruff. Often though, the dandruff could be something other than actual dandruff – it could just be seborrhea – or dry skin. Dry skin itches for dogs just as it does for people. But there could be causes other than simple dry skin to. For instance, a diet deficiency in omega-3 fatty acids could be responsible. You could also be dealing with an allergy or walking dandruff, which is a parasite problem or an infection.
If when you look at your dog it’s obvious that there’s a lot of fur shedding going on and if there is a raw patch or two from scratching too much, you have one of two choices to make. Dog dandruff treatment could conceivably be addressed right at home with a few diet supplements or a good bath. If that doesn’t work so, a trip to the veterinarian to have things checked out could be unavoidable.
A good bath with sulfur or salicylic acid-enriched pet dandruff shampoo could be a great way to go. Make sure that you don’t allow the shampooing to get your dog’s skin too dry, and make sure that you use lukewarm water and not hot water. Pet stores will always sell you medicated shampoos like these. But you need to make sure that you never choose human dandruff treatment products on dogs. Anti-flea shampoos are not acceptable dog dandruff treatment solutions either. These typically leave the dog’s skin extremely dry – and the dandruff could get worse.
What you can use from your human skin care repertoire is colloidal oatmeal soap. This could work great for dogs too; in fact, you could give your dog a bath with oatmeal in the bath water. Dogs need regular grooming too. This allows your dog’s natural skin oils to spread out to every part of your dog’s coat into could where it’s needed.
But if none of these seem to be able to keep the dog dandruff away, you really do need to go to your vet’s. It could be that there is liver disease behind it all.
So if you are looking for dandruff treatment for dogs, your vet should have some medicated treatments available.
