Thursday, April 26, 2012

Too Much Oatmeal and a Dirty Dog



There I sat with a little fluffy mostly white and very dirty, after only a week, dog. Another bath with flea shampoo was out of the question. Ditto for human shampoo, even baby shampoo.

If shampoo is too harsh for my own curly mane (the no-poo credo of those of us with our love/hate or rather hate/love relationship with our curls), surely must be for Wesley’s, I presumed. But that wasn’t the real reason. The PH of dogs isn’t the same as that of humans so we can’t share shampoo.

Although Wesley and I could have walked to our local Pet Supermarket, 5 AM, when his dirty coat was really annoying me was 4 hours too early, so I decided to search the net. 

Bingo. One recipe called for oatmeal, a way to start to use up the huge tub of quick oats I bought before I discovered the virtues of the 20 minute kind. The recipe called for equal quantities of pulverized oatmeal and baking soda mixed with glycerin and water. No glycerin in my kitchen, but I found aloe listed in another recipe. There’s glycerin in the aloe that I’ve had for ages so I figured I couldn’t go far wrong.

So, Wesley’s shampoo consisted of a cup of ground oatmeal, a cup of baking soda, a cup of aloe vera gel, and a cup of water, all mixed up in my Vita Mix, but it could have been done in any food processor if the oatmeal were first pulverized in a coffee grinder. 

Wesley looks clean, smells clean, isn’t scratching thanks to the oatmeal, and I have a bottle of dog shampoo that I think I’ll store in the refrigerator. Why, I don’t know, but I don’t think I want it to get green, slimy or moldy.

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