Prevent or Correct Coat Stains in White Dogs

Allison Alexander working with a white poodle.

Allison Alexander returns to the podcast to discuss how to prevent or correct coat stains in white dogs. Allison and host Laura Reeves take a true deep dive into the details, tips, tricks and methods to manage unsightly staining for all coat types.

“One of the things I’ll say about white dogs,” Allison said, “is even if you haven’t prevented it and you need your dog to be whiter, you need to follow some of the prevention protocols in order to keep them white. In my experience, once you start whitening a coat, even with something you might think is gentle, our dogs do tend to restain a little bit quicker.

“Basically there are three of the more popular ways to keep our dogs white once they’re stained. So, they are using a bluing shampoo, something that has some bluing in it. But what that is doing, it’s really just changing the spectrum. They take something yellow, they put a purple filter over it and then our eye sees that as white and so the problem with that is you do that too often and then your eye starts to see the purple or Gray or something in between there.

“And then the other popular one is an enzymatic cleaner. So those are super popular, but what those actually do is the enzyme is actually eating the stain, therefore eating some of the keratin that’s in the hair and then that makes the hair actually quite weak after a while and it can not only go dingy, turn different color, (it) can actually snap off. So that’s kind of scary.

“Same with bleach. Bleach is doing the same thing. This is why prevention is so important, because as much as we like to whiten our dogs, you kind of want to do it as delicately or as less often as possible. And the more often you’re doing it kind of the more damage you’re doing, right? So, for me, it starts with prevention.

“A lot of these shampoos, how they work, is think of a hair cuticle like scales on a fish, and we want those scales to be super tight and waterproof. Most shampoos that we use work by blowing the hair shaft open to suck the dirt out of the hair. Very few products seal it, so we want products that seal it so it doesn’t restain as quickly and to me that’s just part of the game. Wash, condition, prevent and dry because the damp part is causing (a lot of) the problems.

“I (have) used a very old English recipe (to remove stains)… I use milk of magnesia, the 3% hydrogen peroxide, so the first aid kind, and basically enough cornstarch to bind the two together like a loose toothpaste. And I would literally smother (the dog) in it (after) last ex. And then I just put them to bed. If they’re living in your house, they should sleep in a crate that night because it’s messy. And I let it dry and it’s like the milk of Magnesia helps draw the staining out naturally. Now this isn’t something that’s going to take a urine-stained dog to white overnight like this. (It takes) like 3 weeks, but it also didn’t damage the coat. And I just kept reapplying and reapplying and reapplying and you know, some of those things do really work.”

Listen to the full episode for more “secret menu” tips! And visit Allison’s Leading Edge Dog Show Academy for complete grooming courses.