Bathing the dog is fun if you’re a kid.
Children love watching the dogs run around the house like crazy, rubbing their wet fur on the carpets and up against the couches. Dogs shake water everywhere, and it’s usually several minutes before they calm down.
As a parent, you want to avoid the chaos, so you’re looking for better ways to dry your golden retriever after you give them a bath.
Using the right tricks to get your dog dry quickly without them shaking water everywhere will spare you a ton of stress.
Dogs, and especially a dog like a golden retriever, need regular grooming. With all that hair, they must be washed routinely to reduce shedding and keep them looking their best.
Here are six ways to get your golden retriever dry after a bath without all the mess.
Table of Contents
1. Buy Large Dog Towels
Dog towels are large and thick enough to absorb water quickly.
While your dog is still in the bath, wrap them in the towel the same way you would put them in a blanket, and start rubbing their fur up and down, front to back.
Your dog will still likely shake no matter how dry you get them, so you’ll want to keep them in the bath once you take the towel off.
First, let them shake behind the shower curtain, and then brush them to get any tangles and water left after the toweling and shake.
2. Move From Top to Bottom
Water drains down your dog’s body after a bath just like it does after you take a bath, so you’ll want to start drying them at the top of their body and move downward as they get dry.
If you start with drying their paws and legs, they’ll be wet again by the time you get to their head.
Using your towels or a specialty dog towel, dry their head, back, and tail first.
Give special attention to your golden retriever’s ears. Leftover water in their ears can cause painful ear infections, so spend some extra time drying their ears and the area around the ears.
Make your way down their sides, bellies, and, finally, their legs.
3. Brush Your Golden Retriever After a Bath
Brushing is an essential part after every bath.
A healthy golden retriever will have a ton of hair, so regular brushing is the best way to thin their hair and keep fur off your couches and out of every corner of your house.
Even if you brush your dog every day, it will still shed, but your dog’s coat will be much healthier with regular grooming.
Brushing after a bath also prevents their fur from matting, which can be painful and difficult to fix. If water is allowed to sit in their hair, it will clump, mat, and take ages to comb out.
Bush their hair while it’s wet to push water out of their coats and into the bath.
4. Use a Blow-Dryer
Some dogs will hate it when you use a blow dryer. If they freak out whenever you vacuum, then there’s a good chance they’ll despise the blow-dryer.
Golden retrievers, however, are typically very well-behaved.
As long as you calmly introduce them to the blow-dryer, they may learn to love it. They’ll typically at least put up with it while you’re drying them.
You can also buy special blow dryers for dogs that don’t make as much noise. You can use the blow dryer as you’re brushing them to get their hair nice and dry.
Using a blow-dryer will take much longer than towel-drying them, but your dog will look a lot better. It’s usually worth the effort.
5. Use a Dryer Brush
Now, you can buy specialty dog brushes with drying features designed to make bath time faster and simpler.
These plug-in brushes heat up before you use them to get wet dog fur dry in just minutes. It’s a subtle way to turn a job that can take multiple hands into a single-hand task.
You must run the dryer brush through your dog’s fur several times until it’s dry.
Once you’re finished, your golden retriever’s hair will have a nice, well-kept look.
6. Use a Drying Coat
Sometimes, your golden retriever will still feel wet no matter how many towels you use or how long you blow-dry their fur. You may want to buy a drying coat to put on your dog to wear for about an hour until everything is dry.
The drying coat looks like something you would put on your dog when it’s cold outside. They typically button or snap around their necks and legs.
The drying coat stops them from shaking dry when they’re outside as well, so it spares you wet dog fur all over the kitchen or wherever else your dog goes.
After an hour or so, you can take the coat off and throw it in the laundry for the next time you need to bathe your dog.
Choosing the Right Place to Bathe Your Dog
Where you bathe your dog will make drying them much easier. If you’re bathing your dog in your master bathroom, you can probably expect hair to fly everywhere, especially if you’re blow-drying their hair.
You can, however, buy portable dog baths or bathe them outside to skip the mess.
For example, you can bathe them in the laundry room, which typically has smooth floors and fewer places for hair to go. Then, sweeping up the leftover hair is much faster.
If your dog is well-trained, then you can bathe and dry them outside without them rubbing themselves dirty again in the grass or mud once you’re done.
Final Thoughts
Getting your golden retriever dry will always be a challenge. These lovely dogs need a lot of grooming care, but the effort is so worth it! Hopefully, these tips will make bath time easier and keep your house a bit cleaner.