How do you give a dog a bath that is deathly afraid of water?

 There are certainly differing opinions on bathing dogs. I know lots of owners who believe bathing a dog is actually not good for their coats and can strip away it's natural oils etc. A daily and thorough brushing routine can be very effective in keeping your dog's coat clean and in good condition. Using a proper brush that can penetrate the undercoat should help with the dandruff. As well as keeping her brushed you should at least wipe down the area around her tail etc. and inside her ears. The other areas that need attention are of course her nails and teeth.

 How often you bathe a dog depends on the breed, of course.  My white dogs with hair get a baths a whole lot more than a GSD would require!  (and mud season compounds things).

 So, let's talk about how to deal with your dog.  Where do you bathe her?  Out in the yard with cold water?  In your bath tub?  In a deep sink?  IF you are out in the yard, using cold water from the hose, well, think about how YOU would feel!  lol  If you are using the tub or a sink, make sure you have a bath mat in place so she has good footing. 

 As with bathing a baby, keep track of the water temperature using the inside of your wrist, so she does not get water which is too cold or too hot.

Keep a baggie of high value treats close by.  Wet her down, talk soothingly, and treat!  Maybe a couple especially at the start.  When you use the shampoo, have the water off (perhaps you do, I'm just trying to cover all the possibilities), keep talking softly and soothingly, give her a lovely massage, neck, shoulders, hips and treat, treat treat!   Time to rinse, repeat (maybe you get the idea by now?)  and treat, treat, treat.

I don't know if you towel dry, use a dryer, have her on the ground / floor or on a table / counter, or just let her run around and air dry.  But don't just let her down and leave, keep engaged with her, talking to her, treat, run around with her (put on a leash if you have to and have a pawty!) and lots of treats.

If you have her on a table, have some peanut butter she can lick.  Should you happen to have a groomer's table with the arm to hold the loop, you can rub peanut butter on the pole of the arm, and let her lick that.

Like anything else, you can work to desensitize her.  If she freaks out at being in the tub, put her in the tub, treat and talk happily and let her out and done!  Do that often in between baths.  You can think of different steps in the process, maybe sometimes you put her in, run the water but it is not bath time so she does not get wet, another time you just wash her feetsies and let her go all in between the full bath time.

Hope you find something that works!

You probably need to do some counter conditioning. In the tub with treats with no water running for a while. I in the tub with treats with water running but very slowly, outside if the tub with water running at full speed, etc. Do you have a shower head that allows you to move it and water down the dog or are you using a bucket to wet the dog down? I have one of those shower miss for my dogs as well. They love it as it is like the ultimate doggy back scratch time when I wear that thing. Worst case you can take the dog to the vet and get some doggy xanax to give a small dose to the dog right before bath.

 I second Jewlie's suggestion.  I'd work slowly up to the actual bathing, using lots of treat and praise.

Everyone has offered excellent advice.  Our dog is cooperative with baths in the tub.  One of us gets in the tub with her, and we use a large plastic bowl to pour warm water over her.  The faucet is gently running (not blasting -- not loud or splashing).  We turn off it off when we're shampooing her (massage is great!), then use the bowl to rinse her off.  Throughout this whole process she's getting lots of treats (we have a bowl on the edge of the tub), and we sound like idiots, praising her and singing silly songs about looking pretty.    We use a rubber mat in the tub so she doesn't feel like she'll slip. 

Having said all that, we don't bath her very often.  Her fur is very short, so that helps.  In the winter when it's wet and rainy, we use a wet washcloth and/or a bowl of water to swish her paws in if they're muddy (and we wipe under her belly if she kicks up dirt/mud there).  We also have these baby wipe things (made for dogs -- they have aloe and some herbal stuff in them).  We can wipe her coat down with those to freshen it up.  In the summer when she's laying in the dirt and grass more, then she gets baths more often, but even then it's only every few weeks.

I've got a friend who bathes his dogs every single Sunday.  They're tiny dogs who only go outside to potty and short walks.  They can't be dirty enough for weekly baths!  I think it's hard on their skin to be bathed that often, but he's a neat-nick and doesn't want them to smell.  The baby wipe things would be great for him, but he prefers the baths!

Thanks for the advice everyone! We don't have a bathtub :/ or a sink big enough to fir her in... She is a big-boned black lab.. And our shower does not have a removable showerhead.. :/ I have been brushing her, her fur is just so oily and feels so dirty, I feel like it must be discomforting to her.. she also had mange, so her skin is pretty dry and she has a lot of dandruff, especially now that her coat is blowing... perhaps I can try to get her in the shower and rinse her with warm water with a cup? Thanks for the advice, everyone. :)

 Labs in general have oily fur, it helps to repel water.  You can add coconut oil or apple cider vinegar to her food to help her skin from the inside out.

There are also waterless shampoo's out there but I've never used them.  My best suggestion is to make the bath tub a happy place. As suggested, lots of treats. Have everything ready before you even get the dog. If needed, get a large pot filled with warm water and sit it outside the tub and use that to wet the dog while she's in  the tub. That way you don't need the faucet right away.

It may take a while of hard work to get her to tolerate the tub/water. She may never enjoy it.  And if you bath out side (as I'm guessing you are), get a kiddie pool and have FUN! Fill it before letting the dog out, and treats ect, Keep calm and praise her, she'll keep calm. But if she's afraid of the hose, don't use it. Just use a bowl or what ever

 You can buy a removable shower at Walmart or about $10. That's what I use. I've never heard of a Lab that was afraid of water. LOL! She could be afraid of the tub or the hose. How were you set up to bath her?

Well, we dont have a bathtub, and out shower head cannot be removed :( so I took her outside and warmed up the hose water, and just tried to get her a little wet, but she got really scared.. I guess I don't blame her though, lol! It is just weird because my other dog Milo (who is a yellow lab mix) could be BLASTED by the hose and not budge lol ( ive never done that ) haha. I have been giving her a good brushing to at least get all the dirty undercoat out.. and I just bought a good brush offof amazon, so hopefully that will help as well :)

Meagan -- frequenty I've seen a water hose used as punisment for a dog.  You'll need to experiment a bit to try to isolate -- is she afraid of the hose itself?  Or water spraying from the hose?  (in other words -- there's a difference between a hose with a sprayer on it and a hose with NO sprayer on it.)

 If the sight of a hose freaks her out -- then fill up a clean trashcan with water, stand her next to it and use cups or pitchers full of water to first wet her down and then to rinse her. 

Mostly to bathe a dog you simply need to wet down their coat, dilute some soap in water (just a blob of shampoo is hard to rinse out!) and then cups or pitchers of water to rinse.  Be minimal with the soap so it's not as difficult to rinse out.

That said -- what Jewillee said above is important.  Taking time to desensitize the dog to ANY thing that scares it -- it takes time sometimes LOTS of time.  but if you are patient --  and diligent in making sure you use tiny tiny steps in exposing the dog to the thing that scares it -- you can usually build on that and extinguish the fear.

meaning.  you don't take a dog "deathly afraid of water" and turn the hose on them.  First -- maybe you just stand near the hose when it is off ...  treat.  pet and praise for calm behavior.  Then STOP.  walk away.

Next session ... pick up the hose nozzle while the dog is near.  Talk to her ... say "yes -- this is the hose but it doesn't always squirt at you -- see??" and reward for calm behavior.  If just picking up the hose starts to freak her ... put it down and treat for calm behavior.    next time just *touch* it but don't pick it up.

In other words -- break it down into endlessly tiny steps if you must.  But when you get to a step that causes fear BACK UP and go even slower.   Go back to the last thing you did that was rewarded for calmness and do that.  Always end the session on the dog getting a treat for being calm (a "win" in other words)

Begin to "touch" or pick up the hose at different times.  So she begins to associate that the hose isn't always going to try to kill her. 

It might take you a week to even turn on the water while she's near -- but if you keep ALL the sessions ending on a good note -- then you can build on that.  Once you can turn the hose on ... you can start to bring her closer -- eventually wetting your hands and then her.  You may not have to break it into quite this many steps -- but if she IS "deathly afraid" -- you may have to in order to show her gradually that the hose isn't going to kill her -- and YOU aren't going to hurt her with it.

Now -- if you discover it is the hose and not "water" alone she's afraid of -- you go ahead and bathe her with a bucket and a cup ... but don't stop trying to desensitize the hose.  In my mind -- if I *know* a dog is super afraid of a thing ... I will always make the time to try to desensitize that thing just because I don't like my animals harboring a fear of anything.

 At the same time -- you will want to try to bathe her inside -- even in a shower (as long as there is a drain the floor) with a big trash can full of water and some diluted soap -- simply because A) you may need to bathe her when it's too cold outside and B) dogs are very situational -- and you may find that bathing her INSIDE in the shower may provoke a whole different response than doing it outside!

Does that make sense? 

If you try to figure out what she is really afraid of -- it's easier to desensitize it.  At some time in the past she was probably somehow punished or teased with water.  Throwing water on a dog is a very common punishment.  But was it done with a big pitcher or basin of water or was it a hose? 

Figuring out which?  That will help you begin to know how to desensitize it.

It may take you a long time -- but you can generally desensitize ANYTHING.  But it takes a while. 

Good luck - I hope I wasn't confusing.

No Callie you were not confusing, your advice was very very helpful, as usual. :) I believe that the hose is not the problem because I take her for walks around the house, and sometimes someone is using the hose for some reason, and we walk right by it, and as long as she is not in the water, she is fine with it.. and it would make sense that perhaps the water stirred up some fear in her... her previous owner had a garden that was always being watered with the hose, and it wouldn't surprise me if she got sprayed by it for fun. -.- I will try the warm water with a cup in the shower tomorrow... I also take into consideration Denise's advice - that some people think that washing a dog isn't good for their coat because it strips it of their natural oils - I get that too and somewhat agree. One of the main reasons I want to bathe her so bad is because she previously had mange, so she has very dry skin, and that causes her to itch a lot, and she has hip dysplasia and has a very large rib cage so she cannot get to the itches like other dogs can, she has to run to someone to fix her itch, and that makes me sad. :( I have an idea that if I bath her and clean up the actual skin underneath it may help the dryness a bit, and in turn help the itching? Or is my logic wrong? Please correct me if I'm wrong. :)

 I've got a dog with wicked dry skin and I've found that an oatmeal bath helps (once a week) as well as adding the oils to their food.. I've also got a dog who's deathly afraid of water coming out of the hose. He was blasted for fun.. But at the age of 19, I just avoid using the hose around him.

Meagan -- I think you're talking about sarcoptic mange right?  Not demodex?

If she's itchy -- when you DO bathe her use T-Gel (yes the human stuff) and then use tea tree oil in the final rinse (Wal-mart has both of those).  T-gel is marveous for reducing itchy skin