# Stains on White Fur



## Karenl (Jul 12, 2010)

Help! This is quite embarassing...thank goodness noone can see me...haha
But does ANYONE know how to get stains off a dogs rear end? My dog is mostly black with white streaks on her cheeks, chin and legs, but her butt is also white. She LOVES to swim, spent hours a day in a lake last week and now her white butt is reddish-brown. We've tried the tear stains...would Peroxide get her white again? Thx!


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## Graco22 (Jul 16, 2007)

Peroxide will whiten, but it will also damage the hair pretty good too, and chances are it will break off, which won't be pretty. Use baking soda and dawn dishsoap (the original blue kind). Make a paste of it, then let it soak 10 minutes or so. (put it on dry) Rinse super well and then shampoo again with a pet shampoo. That should take care of the dingy brown color.


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## traceymc (Jul 14, 2010)

I have the staining on Alfies face pretty bad. Can't use anything near his eyes though.


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## JiveDadson (Feb 22, 2010)

Response removed. Too confusing.


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## Graco22 (Jul 16, 2007)

JiveDadson said:


> Zoot had terrible red stains when he and Dexter found me. I think it was probably algae. It was worst under his eyes. It smelled awful. I went through a bottle of Show Eyes brand stuff. If it helped more than water would have, I can't say.
> 
> The mess is almost completely gone now. Here's what I did. I did a lot of classical conditioning to get him to tolerate and eventually like for me to pull and scratch under his eyes. I also bought some drops to put in his eyes for protection, but I never had to use it. I trimmed the area right down to the skin. Next I decided to try to make the area inhospitable to the algae by changing the pH. Dog skin has a pH in the neutral range, around 7, give or take. After reading some stuff on the web, I decided to lower the pH using vinegar, which has a pH around 2.5. After allowing it to sit for a while, I would wash it off with water. That seems to have worked. I still have to remove tiny bits of stinky goo, but they are manageable now. I'm hoping it will be completely cleared up soon.
> 
> Re. the suggestion above to use Dawn and baking soda... I can't say that will not work, but it is the opposite of the tack that I took. Dawn is unbuffered, and has a pH of 9. Baking soda has a pH of 8.2.


The OP is not talking about tear staining, which is a totally different situation. Tear staining is cleared up from the inside out..the tears are what are causing the staining, and the red color is the yeast, not algae. Many times diet changes can clear up tear staining on its own. The staining the OP is talking about is dirt stains, and has nothing to do with PH. Glad you are getting your dog's tear staining under control though.


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## JiveDadson (Feb 22, 2010)

Graco22 said:


> The OP is not talking about tear staining, which is a totally different situation. Tear staining is cleared up from the inside out..the tears are what are causing the staining, and the red color is the yeast, not algae. Many times diet changes can clear up tear staining on its own. The staining the OP is talking about is dirt stains, and has nothing to do with PH. Glad you are getting your dog's tear staining under control though.


I assumed that the OP's dog had algae because it happened after swimming in a lake. But you are right. Tear stains are often red yeast, not red algae. I was responding to traceymc, not the OP. But that's confusing. I'm going to delete the comment.


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