Bathtime horrors

Question
When I try to bathe my 1 yr old German Shepherd, she gets very frightened and fights until I give up. Her head, eyes, muzzle and snout turn red and it looks like a stroke in progress. I have tried three times with no success. I take a washcloth and wipe her down but that's not helping with the odor.
Does she need to be sedated to bathe her?

Answer
Hey, Stormy,

It's unfortunate that your dog panics when you try to give her a bath. You can't force a dog to go through something that feels so frightening to her, particularly when she's a big dog like a German shepherd.

One solution is to start slowly, and acclimate her bit by bit to all the little things that bring on the panic. Use food to change the focus away from each successive step. This may take a week or more, but it'll be worth it. Right now she's probably got a laundry list (sorry) of all the things leading up to the dreaded bath. So what I'd do is hand feed her all her meals in the bathroom or wherever you've been trying to bathe her.

Use the pushing exercise, where you hold her food in one hand and put your other hand against her chest. As she eats you slowly pull the food hand away ever-so slightly so that she has to put pressure on your chest in order to eat. Do this for at least three days, build up the pressure so that she's pushing really hard against you while eating, them move on to adding the things that might start to trigger her panic, very slowly, one-by-one. Don't use any force, make HER use force (pushing into you) in order to eat all her meals.

As you make her feel comfortable with each of the steps you can slowly wear down her resistance to the whole process. You should also talk to her sweetly, pet her, occasionally touch her paws and other parts of her body as she's eating from your hand. Here's a full description of the pushing exercise: http://tinyurl.com/3balu6

I hope this helps,

LCK