From the grooming table

I've groomed dogs for fourteen years. Here's what I stopped telling owners to buy.

Your groomer sees your dog six times a year. You see him every day. That's why she noticed and you didn't.

For most of my career I sold shampoo. Oatmeal, medicated, chlorhexidine, the expensive one behind the counter. If a dog came in itchy, I sent the owner home with a bottle and a recommendation to bathe twice a week.

I stopped doing that about two years ago. Not because the shampoo was bad. Because I got tired of watching the same dogs come back in eight weeks looking exactly the same.

The rust-brown between the toes isn't dirt. It's saliva.

Here's what I see that you can't

You look at your dog every single day. That sounds like an advantage. It isn't.

You're watching a slideshow with no gaps in it, so nothing ever looks like a change. The patch on his hip has been there so long it's just what his hip looks like now.

I see him six times a year. March, then May, then July. I've got gaps. And in the gaps, things move.

I'm not more observant than you. I just have the before photo.

So when I run a comb through and it snags, when it comes away loaded with undercoat, when the skin under the elbow has gone dark and thick and leathery, I'm not seeing today. I'm seeing the difference between today and April.

And here's the thing I've watched happen a hundred times. The owner is always doing everything right. That's what makes it so frustrating. Prescription food, the medicated bath schedule, the Apoquel, the shots. Nobody's being lazy.

It just keeps coming back.

Why it keeps coming back

I can usually tell which week of the cycle a dog is in before the owner says a word.

Fresh shot, three weeks out, coat looks decent. Six weeks out, it's back. New food, two good weeks. New shampoo, two good weeks. New anything, two good weeks.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to work out why that number kept repeating.

Any change you make gives the immune system a short break. New food, new drug, new wash, doesn't matter which. That's your two good weeks. Then the body settles into the new normal, and the skin underneath is exactly as thin as it was before you started.

Six things failing the same way isn't six wrong choices. It's one problem nobody's treating.

Everything on that list works on the reaction. The shampoo washes the surface. The medication turns down the itch signal. None of them touch the barrier underneath, and the barrier is the actual problem.

What I switched to

A rep left a bottle with me two years ago and I put it in a drawer, because reps leave things all the time.

What got me to open it was a Golden I'd been grooming since she was a puppy. Belly the colour of a brick, no hair from her chest to her back legs, and an owner who'd spent something like four thousand dollars and had run out of ideas.

I told her it probably wouldn't do anything. She said she didn't care.

I saw that dog again nine weeks later and had to check the booking to be sure it was her.

It's liquid collagen. You pour a pump on their food once a day and the dog has no idea it's happening.

Types I and III, which are the two skin is actually built from, plus hyaluronic acid to hold water in the structure and glucosamine for the joints underneath. Cold-pressed, never heated above 150 degrees, which matters more than it sounds like it should. About 90% of it actually absorbs.

It isn't a drug. It doesn't act on a receptor and it doesn't compete with anything, so nobody has to come off their medication to try it. It goes on top. If a prescription ever changes, that's a conversation with your vet on their timetable, not mine and not a web page's.

Four things I tell people to check

Half the owners who tell me collagen didn't work bought the wrong thing. It isn't their fault, nobody explains this part.

If you've already tried collagen and nothing happened, go and read the back of that tub before you write the whole idea off. There's a good chance it says Type II, which means you gave a dog with a skin problem a joint supplement. That isn't the same experiment.

What my clients say

Do this tonight

Whatever you decide about the bottle, do this part either way. It's the single most useful thing I tell anyone.

Most owners see the scratching drop somewhere between week three and week five. Coat is always last, usually week nine onwards, because hair grows out of follicles that sit in the skin and the skin has to settle first.

So don't judge it at week two. Week two is where everything else you've tried was still working too.

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Results may vary. This is an advertisement and not a news article, blog, or consumer protection update.