My chinnie needs a bath!

[indychinchick]

When I got Skeeter and Scrappy I was told they may not really know how to bathe. The breeder said that their mom took crazy baths and that they may have not quite gotten the hang of it. Well, low and behold my 2 newest chins are not good bathers. Mo gets soooo excited when he sees it's bathtime. He immediately jumps in. Sometimes the bath house doesn't even make it all the way in the cage before he's in! Which makes this problem so weird. I know that chins usually love taking baths.

Scrappy does ok. He doesn't spend as much time in there as Mo does but he does get in and roll around. Skeeter, on the other hand, rolls around in the dust that flies out of the bath house onto the melamine. He rarely gets in the bath house and when he does, he just jumps in and jumps out.

Does anyone have any tricks they've used to fix this problem? I worry about Skeeter because his fur looks kinda icky compared to the other guys. Not really bad, but you can tell he needs a bath. Would treats work? Should I get him his own bath house? I'll try anything at this point!

Oh, and I should add I ordered a different brand of dust this week to see if that might help. I'm switching them from Blue Sparkle to Blue Cloud.

[Crazy Chin Lady]

I've never had this problem, but a few of the chins we have at work didn't know for a while how to bathe.

What I actually had to do was take the dust and rub it all over them. That's the only way for a couple of weeks or so that I could do it, just so they'd get their bath and have clean fur. Eventually they learned how to do it themselves.

I hope this helps!

[DirtySouthChins]

That is pretty much what we have always done too.... We usually take the dust and sprinkle it on their back kind of working it through, if they don't want to take a bath it will help their fur, and it does tend to help them get used to doing it on their own as well. We have had a few of our new one's that didn't like baths and that is all we have done, Roxie still doesn't take to it well, that is why her fur looked a little frumped in her photo's but we do what we can for her, and I have hopes she will catch on just like everybody else did......
Best of Luck!!!

[Wheelie1985]

My chin used to be an awful bather. I was using blue sparkle, so when I got his bath house, it came with that super pet sand, which as well all know isnt that great. So I put it in there, and mixed blue sparkle with it, at that point desperate to try anything. I think the coarser sand sparked his intrest, and all the sudden after mixing the two together, he bathes like a madman. Its like a whole new chin, he used to just kick a little bit of sand under his stomach and hop out, now he stays in there and i have a hard time getting him out! try something like that, maybe itll work. I dont know if the ones that arent taking a bath are with other chins, but if not, maybe try taking all the other chins out of the cage, and just one at a time, see if they will bathe that way, all by themselves. I feel your pain on this one, I had a horrible time with my chin, his fur used to look awful! good luck!

[indychinchick]

I do have some of the super pet sand that came with my bath house. I may try that! The package of that stuff has just been sitting there for months because I didn't really want to use it. Thanks!

[indychinchick]

Well in the middle of crappy times with my chins, I have success! I got my new Blue Cloud yesterday. I decided since Skeeter was mostly bathing in the dust that flew onto the melamine I would try putting his dust on something flat (I've been using those little plastic bath houses), so I put it in a cake pan. It worked! He actually got into it and rolled around! 3 times! Yay!

Sorry to post such a little victory but I'll take anything I can get right now.

Oh, and BTW--he did not take to the Super Pet Sand. Guess I'll just have to finally throw that stuff out.

[Wheelie1985]

That's great! Sometimes you just have to try different things, and it'll work. Glad that worked out for you.