thedoc617
Posted : 3/30/2006 11:00:18 AM
Hi Firestorm,
Welcome to the boards!
I saw from your posts on the other boards that he is clipped short now. Depending on how short he is, you will probably need to get him professionally groomed every 6-8 weeks, and if you want his hair left a little longer then i'd make it between 4 and 6 weeks between grooms.
As far as itchy yucky skin, if it's stinky and scabby, i'd get him to the vet because it may be a skin infection and he'll give you antibiotics and a special veterinary shampoo that may help.
Otherwise, for extra dry/flaky skin I like Tomlyn's Nova Pearls Coal Tar shampoo- it smells awful, but it works great for Daisy and helps her stop itching.
I follow up with a conditioner called "gold metal pets" cream rinse. It has a picture of a cavalier king charles spaniel on it, and it smells like cotton candy.
If the smell is kinda musky and red stuff is comming out of his ears and eyes, then you probably want to treat that as yeast. As long as there are no open oozing sores on his body, you can do the final rinse of 1 cup vinegar to 1 gallon of water and that helps destroy any yeast on the skin.
I would limit his baths to once every 2 weeks if it's DRY skin- if it's infected then per the vet's orders then you probably will have to do it once a week. Daisy's skin dried out sooo bad when I bathed her once a week. Now we do once every 3 weeks and she's fine.
Good luck! Welcome to the boards!
P.S. A better food would help him out too, but I posted that in your other post!