I have heard 2 theories about it, but please feel free to chime in with your own theory.
Use water hotter than what a human would use: Since dogs have a higher body temperature than humans, they should be bathed using hotter water than what a human would use to feel “warmth.” The disadvantage here is that the dog would be uncomfortably hot, or even burned.
Use water cooler than what a human would use: Since dogs have fur, their average body temperature is artificially higher than a human (if a human wore a fur coat, their temperature would be higher than 98.6 F). Therefore, dogs should be bathed in cool water to help them dissipate heat. However, like humans, this would increase the chance of a dog catching a cold or other viral infection.
100F is ideal. This feels “lukewarm” to people. Warm water is best, just not hot because dogs don’t take hot showers every day like a lot of people do and their skin is more sensitive to temperature.
To find out what 100-degree water feels like, just stick a thermometer in a glass of warm tap water. When you get 100, pour the water over your hand so you know what it should feel like coming out of the tap.
Vet Tech. I give dogs and cats baths all the time.
Unless you’ll be blow-drying the dog, he’ll stay wet for a while after the bath no matter how much you towel-dry him, what with the fur. And that wet fur will cool down pretty darn quickly in the air once the bath is over. That being the case, I’d hate to start with a cold bath, because after bath-time, he’s just gonna get colder.
I have a golden retriever who is always hot. She refuses to sleep in the bed with me unless it’s under 70 degrees in the house. Her favorite thing in the world is to go outside in the snow and lie down in a drift until she can’t stand it anymore. She also loves to lie in a kiddie pool full of hose water (ie cold water from the spigot).
If I bathe her in anything but cool water, she gets distressed pretty quickly and wants to leave the tub. I’ve found that she is best when the water is lukewarm to cold. Not as cold as the spigot, but definitely too cold for me to shower in. That’s just the way she likes it.
She dries off in the sun…I don’t see how that would make her colder. Like I said, she enjoys nothing more than being in cold water or snow…
On the other hand, my brother’s little dog, who is a boxer mix with the thinnest of hair - and wears a coat outside in the winter - has to have people-warm water when she has a bath otherwise she shakes like nothing else. She’s decent at taking a bath if you make the water warm enough for her.
One other thing I’ll mention…when my golden was having skin problems that included severe itchyness after a bath (regardless of the kind of anti-itch shampoo I used), people here and also at the vet’s office suggested to bathe her in cool water. As with people, hot showers dry your skin while cool water closes your pores or something. I do find that the cooler I make her baths, the better she does post-bath with itchyness.
