Homemade Dog Shampoo Recipes

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Homemade Dog Shampoo Recipes

Little Wet Maltese in Bath Tub

The homemade dog shampoo recipes below look easy to make. However, we've never tried making any ourselves so would welcome any experience you can pass along to our visitors.

With all the products, we recommend you rinse your dog thoroughly so no ingredients dry on the skin to irritate it.

The recipes on this page cover:

Dogs with dry, itchy skin
Dogs just needing a bath
Dogs that've been skunked
Dogs that've rolled in poop or dead animals

We do not have a flea shampoo recipe since we're inclined to agree with the views expressed by one website author. See Fleas: Friend or foe?

If your dog is covered in fleas, give your dog a lukewarm bath with or without using one of the mild shampoos below. If you immerse your dog long enough, you can drown a lot of the fleas off, which is what we did with F.B.

Follow up with an application of Advantage or Frontline, making sure your dog is dry first.

To get rid of flea eggs in the home, keep your dog(s) and and other furry pets, if you have any, in a bathroom or other place with non-carpeted flooring while you do some thorough vacuuming. Repeat as often as possible till you feel flea control has been established.

Jo did not use anything in the vacuum cleaner bag, but there is a homemade recipe that may preclude having to vacuum as often as she did (page down to Fleas in the home)

If your dog is being fed cheap kibble, a change to a more nutritious diet could be very helpful. We ended up hardly having to use flea control once F.B. had been fed a better diet for a few months.

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HOMEMADE DOG SHAMPOO

Although the three recipes that follow have similar ingredients, we're not sure whether the proportions are equivalent.

Dry Skin Shampoo
Scroll down to where it says "Dry Skin Shampoo." This recipe measures ingredients in cups and quarts.

Free Dog Shampoo
This homemade dog shampoo recipe appears very similar to the one above for bathing your dog, only Ivory dish soap is used instead of Lemon Joy. Also, ingredients are measured in fluid ounces.

Shampup Homemade Dog Shampoo
If you'd rather measure in pints and have apple cider vinegar then you can use this recipe.

According to Russ Richer, a dog lover featured on a website called Article City that allows free reprints, a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar mixed with a pint of warm water can be used as a rinse to restore the ph balance of your dog's skin after using a store bought (or other) shampoos.

Mr. Richer also has an inexpensive homemade dog shampoo recipe consisting of a handful of aloe vera gel diluted with some water, applied to a dog while its coat is dry. You can add a little baby shampoo if you want foam. Then rinse with warm water.

His last suggestion is to deoderize a dog. Take a little essential oil that has an aroma you like and dab on the skin along the dog's spine where the dog can't lick it.

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DOG BEEN SKUNKED?

We wish we'd thought to look up Dr. Krebaum's skunk recipe when Comet tangled with a skunk last year. Actually, this recipe sounds like a fun science project to do with kids! (Just go down the page to where the Q&A says, "Dog skunked? Here's the cure").

P.S. You may want to print out or write up the recipe and put it in a handy place if there are skunks in your off leash areas.

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DOG ROLLED IN STINKY STUFF?

Does your dog like to roll in horse, cow or dog poop or dead animals? It's thought that this is an instinctive behavior inherited from wolves to disguise themselves when hunting.

Of course that's no comfort if you're the unlucky owner! Mitsu would sometimes enjoy finding a very smelly pile of horse or other poop to roll in, so a bath was the first thing she'd get.

Here's Comet resting after a bath.

Jo believes her mother used baby shampoo and someone who posted on Yahoo Answers about this problem said baby shampoo was the only thing that took away the smell.

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