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White Poodle Fur Stain?


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Mum's neighbour has a small white poodle. Its fur around eyes, mouth and a bit around feet are discoloured. She has her groomed once every 3-4 months and bathes her once every 4-6 weeks. She does wipe away eye goobers and has started wiping her mouth after dinner. She feeds Eagle Brand dry kibble with IAMS canned (I've discussed IAMS with her already guys.) Any suggestions.
I know from HF's pics of Perry, Pauly and Peanut that its possible to keep them pretty white. What is this woman doing wrong?

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The staining can be caused by several things and "treatment" can be as simple as changing food and water, or it could be something that needs to be treated surgically. Sometimes they have blocked ducts.

Just switching from tap water to bottled distilled water has been enough to eliminate the staining for my Toy who had HORRIBLE stains. Also, it does seem to be worse with one food than another (more staining on Wellness than Canidae, for example), so she may indeed want to ditch the Iams and see if it helps.

Daily applications of Vaseline can help. Just apply a very thin smear of it right from the corner of the eye. It doesn't prevent tearing or anything like that, but kind of wicks it away and keeps it from settling on the coat. The face still needs to be washed daily and a fresh smear of Vaseline... it doesn't have to be globbered on.

There are eye wipes and lotions for staining that some people swear by, but I've never had any luck with them.

For the mouth staining, personally I believe the dog needs to be clipped more than every 3-4 months :wink: . I don't know how to prevent that other than keeping the hair clipped away. She may want to make sure the dog's teeth are ok (any bad breath?) and that there are no mouth sores or anything that would cause excess drooling and therefore staining.

For the red feet, that sounds more allergy or yeast related since it usually means the dog is licking its feet.

Hope that helps and that she can find something that works! :D

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Here is some thing for you to read as well

[quote]To properly care for your dog's eyes, be sure to:

Keep all hair out of your dog's eyes since scratches to the cornea (the clear membrane across the surface of the eye) can result from contact with hair. Trim the hair using only blunt-nosed scissors, cutting parallel to the edge of the eyelid. This is especially important where the skin folds near the eyes in breeds like Pekingese, Lhasa Apso, and Maltese.

Keep eyes clear of mucus at all times. Infections are often caused by bacteria that overgrow on mucus. Use a sterile eyewash and/or eye wipes to keep eye area clean.

Apply a protective ophthalmic ointment under the top lid to protect the eyes before bathing, facial cleanings, and insecticide treatment. Even 'tearless' shampoos can irritate if too much gets in the eyes or if it is not rinsed out soon enough.

'Tear staining' is a common problem with particular breeds of dogs (e.g., Poodles and Cocker Spaniels), and can get unsightly if not taken care of. Tears are bactericidal, which means they kill the bacteria that can cause infections of the eye. Normally, tears flow across the surface of the eye and quickly drain through the tear duct. This discoloration at the corners of the eyes is caused by normal tears that spill out and lay on the surrounding hair. For breeds that tend to have tear or saliva stains, you could clean hair in affected areas at least weekly with a tear stain remover product.[/quote]

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi....I had a problem with my Shih Tzu face staining really bad. After a lot of research on the topic, I discovered that staining can be caused by the mineral content in your tap water. I trained my dogs to drink from water bottles which keeps them from putting their face in a bowl. They stay dry and clean now. It has helped tremendously. I considered switching to bottle water instead of tap, but that route is too costly for me having 7 dogs. So, I use tap water and they drink it from a hanging water bottle. I can already see that the new growth on their faces is staying white.

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[quote name='AKelley'] I considered switching to bottle water instead of tap, but that route is too costly for me having 7 dogs. [/quote]

I have 10 dogs, some large (Lab, Standard Poodles and a Dobe) and it's really not so expensive to keep them all on bottled water (and I'm as cheap as they come!). We buy it by the gallon in stores like Wal*Mart (not that I'll shop there much for ethical reasons) for 58c a gallon. With all 10 dogs, we go through about 2 gallons of water a day (we also add it to the food) at a cost of only about $1.20 a day and that includes frequently changing it. It's much cheaper to do it this way than buy the individual bottles of water.

Just a thought if you're interested. :)

I'm not a really big fan of water bottles because they are nearly impossible to wash. I've had other critters that used water bottles (bunnies and ferrets), but those darned bottles are so hard to clean. Even if you get the inside of the bottle clean, I never could find a way to effectively clean out the little tubey part with the little roller ball thingy and it would get so slimey. I didn't want to soak them in any kind of cleaner because I worry about residual stuff with plastics, but I couldn't get inside there to clean adequately (or what I'd consider adequate). Maybe I was just doing it wrong. I used to consider putting some of my bearded dogs on water bottles, but after the bottle woes with the other critters, I said forget it.

I do have three Lhasa Apsos and a Schnauzer that drink the bottled water from stainless steel pans (cleaned and changed at least three times daily now instead of the once we used to do) and none of them have beard stains. One of my Lhasas is white and the Schnauzer's beard is very light silver and none of them have beard stains (can't say their faces are dry, though :oops: ). They used to stain horribly.

I'm not dissin' your method. Just throwing out my own experience. :wink:

DP, I don't know why I didn't think of that before, but it took reading this last post to realize that my dogs USED to have beard staining and don't now :oops: . Still not a bad idea for an oral exam with a dog with mouth stains, though.

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