Washing a Westie Dog

Washing your West Highland dog too often can cause great irritation to the skin as they are prone to allergies and dry skin conditions. It is recommended that you should only wash your Westie once a month or at longer intervals. You should always use an approved dog wash or shampoo and read the instructions at all times.

If you are thinking about getting a Westie as a puppy I would advise getting a small soft dog brush and brushing your puppy once a day. This will help the dog get used to the grooming routine and also it will help the dog bond with you. Frequent brushing is needed on your little Westie to keep the coat nice and clean and also the oils in the coat and distributed evenly throughout making it look and feel healthy.

As you can see on these photographs of our West Highland Terrier the time came when she needed to have a good bath, especially as she had just rolled in some sheep poo on the field nearby. Not only did Mitzi smell disgusting all her fur was green too!

You can decide to either let your dogs fur dry naturally by itself after having a bath / wash or you could use a hairdryer. If you decide to use a hairdryer, always ensure that it is on the lowest setting ‘Cool’ or ‘Warm’, NEVER use any other setting. Some dog’s dislike the sound of the hair dryer so if this is your dog just let the dogs coat dry naturally, you do not want to scare your pet because it will then associate having a nice bath / wash with that horrible noisy hairdryer and it will remember.

Once Mitzi is nice and clean she actually sits waiting for the hairdryer to come on! She is one little Westie that loves being dried with it. We’ve got lots more pictures of Mitzi the Westie in our photo gallery getting her bath and then being dried so if you have a moment why don’t you take a look – she does look rather cute.

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Westie Full of Wind…

Have you given your dog new treats recently? Treats such as doggy chew sticks, flavoured dog biscuits or similar? If so be very careful not to give your Westie too many if you are trying out a new brand.

Recently we bought Mitzi a bag of ‘dental cleaning sticks’ which we saw advertised on TV. On the rear of the packet it said they were suitable for all dogs and would help remove the plaque on dogs teeth. Great we thought, not only will she have lovely clean teeth, she will enjoy the doggy treat as well at the same time.

The instructions were to give a small dog one of the dental cleaning sticks per day, no more. So being a responsible dog owner, we thought we’d try Mitzi with just half of one of these sticks, just in case a full one was too much. Mitzi really enjoy the treat we had given her so we thought we would give her the other half later on in the day.

After about an hour of giving the treat to our West Highland Terrier she was letting off the most disgusting smells in the world! Mitzi cleared the lounge and our guests within 5 seconds of letting off! The smells continued throughout the evening. Our house smelt like a chemical factory! Obviously it wasn’t Mitzi’s fault, it was whatever was in these dental cleaning sticks that made her stomach so bad it produced all this gas and wind! All I can say it thankfully we never gave her the full treat, only half of it.

My advice to you is when trying out new dog treats on your beloved pet, only give your West Highland Terrier either half or less of what the manufacturer recommends because not only can it be bad for your dogs stomach, you may never see your guests again if it happens to you!

Westies do have quite delicate stomachs so always be aware of what you feed them.

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