Hints and Tips

The West Highland White Terrier is a very healthy breed. Westies have been spared the genetic problems associated with many of the other breeds. Westie breeders are responsible for the genetic health of the breed and so far have been successful. Skin problems are the single largest problem with Westies and it affects about 20% of the population. Fortunately there are things you can do to eliminate or at least minimize the problem.

I have been through the mill, with vet bills, putting my girl on steroids and allergy shots, with no success. Finally, I heard of an herb that has helped her immensely. Now, I give her 1,000 mg. of MSM (methylsulfonymethane) and 500 mg. of vitamin C per day. (I never knew dogs required Vita C!) The herb is about $22.00 for 2 months supply. A whole lot cheaper than all the other stuff I've tried. And, it has worked for us. Give it about 2 weeks. I bathe her twice a week, and give her a good, old-fashioned, vinegar rinse, afterwards (2 oz.vinegar, 6 oz. warm water). Her hair has grown back, she no longer licks and chews at her feet, and I feel good that she's not on any drugs! Note - MSM is available from health stores.

Fleas

Skin problems are usually caused by a flea allergy and if your dog is allergic to flea bites a single flea bite will have him pulling his hair out. So, the first thing you can do is make your Westie unattractive to fleas. For this you need to give your dog 3/4 teaspoon of Brewers Yeast (Vitamin B6) everyday all year. Brewers yeast will cause the dog to give off an odor that fleas do not like but you will not be able to detect. No fleas, no skin problems. This works for all dogs, just give 3/4 teaspoons for each 18 pounds of body weight. You can purchase large bottles of Brewers Yeast powder or tablets from your pet supply store. Mix the powder with your dogs food or give them the tablets as a treat. This really works, our many Westies have never had a flea in 25 years.

Grass Allergies

Some skin problems are attributed to "grass allergies". The second thing you can do to eliminate skin problems and especially "hot spots" is to put your dog on a special diet that eliminates wheat and beef . Wheat and beef seem to cause some Westies to be more susceptible to grass allergies. Change your dogs diet to one based on chicken and rice or lamb and rice.

A "hot spot" will appear as a circular crusty lesion with hair loss about an inch (2.54 cm) in diameter. Females seem to be more susceptible then males. While a hot spot can occur anywhere on the dog they are more likely to be found on the belly and around the genitals. See your Vet to get a topical ointment to treat the sore.

Over the years we have tried many remedies for hot spots, none totally successful. However, we met a veterinarian from Venezuela who suggested we add a teaspoon of real butter to our dogs food along with Linatone with Beta-Carotene. Our dogs coats have improved and none have had hot spots all summer.

Bathing

To avoid skin problems, you should not bathe a Westie unless there are medical or sanitary* reasons! The Westie is double coated and dirt will wipe off the hard outer coat while the dense soft inner coat protects the Westies skin from dirt, mold, pesticides and fleas. If you bathe a Westie you will wash out the inner coat and the protective oils in the outer coat leaving your pet susceptible to skin problems that will cause unpleasant odors.

If the dog is dirty when it comes in from outside, put it in it's crate with a clean cotton towel for about a half an hour. When the dog comes out of it's crate, the towel will dirty and the Westie will be clean. If you do not have a crate with a clean towel, your carpet will work great. On a very rare occasion (he/she was playing in the sewer) you may stand the Westie in shallow water and wash its legs and belly but no more! None of our Westies have ever had a bath and they are white and have no odor except for an earthy smell (the smell of grass and earth). When they come in out of the rain there is an odor caused by the rain and the natural oils in the coat. This odor disappears when they dry.

So how do you keep the Westie white? Simple, buy white grooming chalk and sprinkle it into the coat once a week or as needed. You can use a spray bottle to slightly dampen the coat prior to sprinkling in the grooming powder. Let it set for about an hour, then brush it or pat it out. Do this outdoors or in your garage unless you love to dust. Comb or brush the coat thoroughly, but try not to comb out all the soft undercoat which will look like cotton fibers on your comb or brush.

If you follow these hints (no bathing, brewers yeast and diet) your Westies skin problems should clear up over a period of three months. You will have to continue the diet and brewers yeast supplement for the life of the dog.

Low Thyroid

If you are doing all of the above and your dog still has skin problems, see your veterinarian and have your dogs thyroid checked. A very small percentage of Westies have low thyroid which, if severe, leads to oily hair, hair loss, flaky skin or thickening of the skin (like elephant skin) and an unpleasant odor. This is controllable with thyroid supplements. In young puppies (6 to 8 weeks), low thyroid can show up as chronic dandruff. Here the prognosis is not good, these puppies will die very young even with thyroid supplements.

Diet

Just what is a good diet for a Westie? First, dogs should only be fed dog food to assure they receive a balanced diet, no table scraps. For Westies, one cup of dry food, with one tablespoon of canned meat dog food (for the coat), fed once a day will keep them fit and trim. Add enough warm water to wet the dry food but not make it too soupy. If your dog does not suffer from skin allergies (see above), Kennel Ration Kibbled Biscuit is an excellent dry food but any dry food labeled as a complete and balanced diet is OK although high protein dry foods or other rich foods can cause hot spots. What ever dry food your dog likes is fine, but once you have picked one stick with it and do not change it. Any canned meat is OK provided it is labeled as a complete and balanced diet. To help the coat shine add one teaspoon of Lambert Kay's Linatone Plus dietary supplement to the food every day.

As a morning treat, give your Westie some dog biscuits or other hard treats to keep their teeth clean. Also give your Westie a treat each time you put him in his crate.

Never feed your Westie pork, peanuts or chocolate. Chocolate can be lethal to dogs. Theobromine, an ingredient that stimulates the cardiac muscle and the central nervous system, causes chocolate's toxicity. About two ounces of milk chocolate can be poisonous for a 10 pound Westie puppy. Westies can have a severe allergic reaction to peanuts, one of ours had to be rushed to the vet after eating a single peanut. Do not give them bones of any kind. The powerful jaws of a Westie can splinter bone and the splinters can lodge in their throat or puncture their stomach.

Beard Stains

To eliminate beard stains, give your Westie 500 mg of vitamin C every day. Crush the tablets and add them to your dogs food (500 mg per 20 pounds of weight). The stain will stop and the hair will be white as it grows out. Beard hair will take six months to grow out. As a bonus, the vitamin C will stop the dogs urine from causing brown spots on the lawn.

Digging

Westies are earth dogs, bred to go underground and kill or flush fox, woodchuck, badgers and other vermin. The instinct to dig is part of being a Westie. If your Westie is trying to dig under your fence, fill the hole with concrete or bricks. You can not break a Westie of digging.

Correcting / Spanking

Spanking your Westie is useless. Spanking will only bring out a Westie's Scotch nature and they will repeat what ever they were spanked for just for spite.

The best way to correct a Westie is to take away love. Tell them you don't like them any more, shoo them away with out petting them or ignore them. This will get better results than any other punishment. Never put a Westie in his crate as punishment.

House Training

Westies are very bright dogs. Because they are bright they learn quickly but they will also try to get away with as much as possible. For this reason you must be consistent in your training and discipline yourself before you start house training your Westie.

An eight week old puppy can not go all night with out relieving its self (see “Puppy's First Night” on the puppy information page). Begin training by first papering the entire floor of the room where the puppy sleeps and is confined at night. The puppy will not soil its bed if it can help it. The puppy will usually go to the same area each time. Once the puppy has defined its area you can reduce the paper coverage to just that area. Clean the rest of the floor to remove all scent. Over the next week move the papers each night a little closer to the door leading outside. Always keep one of the slightly soiled papers and place it on top of the clean papers. This helps the puppy find the right place each time. By the end of the week the papers will be near the door and the puppy will be used to heading toward the outdoors.

Outdoors you will put some of the slightly soiled paper on the ground where you would like your puppy to go. You will need to take the puppy outside as soon as you get up in the morning and just before bed as well as 30 minutes after each meal and 30 minutes after you notice your puppy drinking water. At first, carry the puppy outside and put him down on the paper. The puppy will smell the paper and know what to do. Praise the puppy when it has finished. After a week you should no longer need to keep the newspaper outside.

Westies live to please their masters. They respond to praise and are devastated when you take away love by telling them they were bad and ignoring them. A little praise goes a long way when house training your Westie.

Raw Hide Chews

Do not give your Westie raw hide chews. A Westie can get small pieces stuck in their throat and the raw hide can wear a hole through the esophagus. This same warning extends to Choo-Hooves, Pigs ears etc.

Heat Stroke

The symptoms of heat stroke in a dog are rapid gasping for air, rigid frozen stance, foam around the nose and mouth and/or convulsions. To save the dog you must get it cooled off immediately. Use cool water from a garden hose or place the dog in a bathtub of cold water to wet the body of the dog. Keep the dog in the water and still until the breathing returns to normal.

A dog has no sweat glands, except on the pads of it's feet, and cools itself by panting. Cool air inhaled into the lungs cools the dog. If the ambient air temperature is above the dogs internal temperature (~101 degrees F) the dog can not cool and can go into heat stroke.

Avoid situations that can bring on heat stroke. Never ever leave a dog in a parked car. Even with the windows part way down the air temperature in the car can easily exceed 101 degrees F. When walking your dog remember the air temperature one foot above the concrete side walk or street asphalt can be 30 degrees hotter than it is at five feet. You may feel a nice cool breeze on your face while your Westie is getting over heated air off the ground. Be prepared to pick up your dog and carry it home. Make sure your dog has plenty of fresh cool water at all times (put ice in the water bowl in the summer).

Keeping Your Westie Safe

Westies were bred to hunt and kill vermin and that instinct is very strong. It is so strong in fact that it is unlikely you will be able to recall your Westie once it has spotted game. Game is considered cats, squirrels, rabbits, snakes, woodchucks, mice, rats, moles and birds for most city Westies.

For your Westies safety, keep him/her on a leash at all times when out walking or in a fenced yard at home. We have sold many a puppy to people replacing a Westie that suddenly darted into traffic and could not be recalled. The owners have all said "he/she always stopped before when I called" or "he/she never left the yard before". The bottom line is that no matter how well trained or well behaved you believe your Westie to be, at the sight of game, your Westie is obeying a different and ancient set of rules that take priority over your rules.

We recommend a fenced yard (check the fence line frequently, these guys are diggers) or at least a fenced area, unless you enjoy standing in the rain with your dog on it's leash. You can buy portable, folding fences (exercise pen) from your pet supply house in a variety of sizes.

Traveling

Do your Westie a favor and keep him in his crate when traveling in a car. A metal wire crate affords the best protection in case of an accident. Wear your seat belt so you can live to get your Westie out of the car.

Microchip (Submitted by Marcy Kent)

I recently took my Westie to his veterinarian and had a small microchip placed under his skin. They inserted the microchip through a needle. It is a relatively painless for the dog. (Nobody likes shots.) This microchip is placed between the shoulder blades. If my Westie ever gets lost and he is not wearing his tags they can scan the chip in his back. Most vets and almost all animal shelters have the ability to scan this chip. The chip is just a number and they can look up that number and get all of my current information and return my Westie to me. Everyday people lose their dogs as they get out of the back yard or escape in some other way. If the dogs are not wearing tags they almost never make home again. This is a great way to protect yourself and your pet from ever being permanently separated.

Thanks to Marcy Kent for this addition to the Westie-Gram Online. We had the unfortunate experience to lose two of our Westies that dug under the fence. We never recovered them and have never gotten over their loss.

Grooming Tips

Grooming a Westie head.

This is how I do it. Bear in mind that I never bathe my Westies. I put white grooming chalk in the coat after it has been combed to make it fuller and whiter.

The hair should be clean and dry, and combed well. Trim the ears down one inch on each side leaving them at a sharp point on the top. Comb the hair between the ears straight up and cut it in a gentle curve starting with the end of your cut down the inside of one ear and crossing the skull to the same spot on the inside of the other ear.
Place your thumb in the stop. The stop is the space between the eyes. The outside of your thumb should be resting on the nose with the broad part of the thumb resting between the eyes. Comb the hair on top of the head forward and cut straight along the middle of your thumb. This will leave the hair over the eyes, without blocking the view.
Carefully trim the hair in the corner of the eye so there is no obstruction to the whole eye. The lay of the hair along the nose forms a Y from the nose to each eye. If the hair in the center of the Y is too long, pull it up straight and trim it bluntly. When it lays down it will layer and not look blunt cut as long as you had it combed up straight.
Now comb the hair on top of the head, between the ears and the eye brows straight up. Using your fingers as a clamp to hold the hair up, trim the hair in a slight dome using the height of the cut at the eyes as a starting point and curving over to the end of the cut at the ears as the ending point. Do this across the head section by section. You have sort of a wedge with the end of the cut on the ears and the line cut of the eyes acting as a guide for the height of the hair.
Starting on the side, comb the hair out and cut the hair to the same length that you cut the top of the head. Starting below the ear, leaving the back frame, cut almost all the way down the face into the chin hair. Be careful to maintain the same length as the top. Work your way forward section by section all the way to the nose. It is important to cut the hair under the eye. If it is left long, the weight of the hair pulls it down flat. You need to trim the hair on the side of the nose too. It is never as long but needs to be trimmed too. You will have a frame around the face which is still long.
Now comb the chin down and trim it as short as you like. I usually go for about one and one half inches. Trim up the side of the head from your chin cut up to the end of the outside cut on the ear. Fold the ear down at the cut on each side and trim the hair the rest of the way around. It should be only the hair behind the ear that is left to cut. You should just be bring the side frame in alignment with the short hair on top of the head.

The whole procedure is guided by the length of the first cut on the ear. Everything is guided from that length. From the front the face is round. From the side it looks like two soup bowls placed bowl to bowl, not really round, more oval.

Before you start, try pulling as much of the long hair out as you can. The more times you pull out the face frame, the thicker it will become. It you have never done it, it will take four or five times before you get a good thick face frame. It will take six months for the hair to grow back long enough to need cutting. If you can't bring yourself to do all of it, at least pull out some all over the head. If it is long, it will be dead and it won't hurt. It just feels funny and the dog needs to get use to it.

Stripping

When Westies worked on the farms of Scotland so long ago, they ran through briers and brambles in pursuit of vermin that destroyed the farmers crops. Naturally their hair was pulled out as it caught in the brush. The Westies of that era had harsh white coats that were kept short by nature.

Westies of today have a far different appearance than their ancestors. While their appearance is more pleasing, with the soft full leg furnishings (hair), it is not very practical to keep clean and tangle free. Your dog probably has limited opportunities to run through briers and brush and running under your bed just doesn't cut it (no pun intended) so, we have to do natures work for them. We have to pull out the old coat to keep the new coat strong and healthy.

We can maintain the proper coat in our Westies by pulling out the long hair on a regular basis. This is called stripping. Repeated stripping of the coat causes it to grow in coarser and thicker. The coat will repel water and can be brushed clean without bathing. This is why we do not bath our Westies. The hard coat is destroyed by the chemicals in the shampoo and the skin is dried out and irritated at the same time.

It is best to start training a puppy to be stripped at about 8 to 10 weeks. Their hair is not rooted like our hair. It can be pulled out without pain but the dog can feel it. When the puppy is tired from a good romp, sit down with him on your lap and began to pull out the long wispy hairs on his head. The hair on the head begins to "release" at this time and slowly releases over the rest of the body as the puppy grows. Pull the hair in the direction it grows. Do not try to do it all at once but do some everyday. By the time the puppy is 6 months old, you will have stripped his entire body of puppy fuzz and he will be familiar with the feeling of having the hair pulled out. He will probably just lay on your lap and snooze as you do it. The belly, lower face and neck are the most sensitive parts of the body. They are also the slowest part of the body to re-grow hair that has been pulled out.

You will notice that the head has developed a new halo of fuzz by 6 months. Now you should begin to be more selective in the hair you pull out. The dog will not develop the full coat of an adult dog until he is about 15 months old. By that time, you will have pulled the entire body twice and the back and top of the head several times.

Many years ago the handler, now judge, Dora Lee Wilson wrote an article on stripping. She diagrammed the areas of a dog and the time it takes the hair in each area to grow back. The area from the back of the head to the tail and down the sides, about as far as you fingers reach when you run your hand down the dogs back, grows the fastest. The tail and shoulders would be next in length of time to grow back. The sides, belly, legs and head are the slowest. I once charted the time it took our Ch. PJ'S Buffalo Bill to grow a new coat. It took 12 weeks for the back to go from stripped to 1 inch of coat and 8 months for the head and sides to grow back. The point is that you should not take all the hair off the head and sides unless you are willing to have a funny looking dog for a few months. Yet, sometimes this is the best thing to do for the older dog if the dog's coat has been bathed regularly and is very soft.

If you have never stripped your Westie and the coat was just bathed, the following is what you must do to get a good coat. Go three months at least without shampooing him. By this time some of the oils will have come back in the coat and it should be long and dead enough to pull easily. Brushing, and liberal use of chalk (see grooming chalk below), will keep your beloved friend clean. Grit your teeth, stand him on a rubber mat (so he won't slip) on the top of a table or the washing machine and start pulling the hair out on his back. Combing will pull out some hair but not fast enough to develop a good coat. Do as much as your hand will let you do. You should pull the entire back within a week so the hair will all come back in at about the same time. Keep at it until you have pulled ALL THE COAT - BACK, LEGS, BELLY AND HEAD. The dog will look very strange. DO NOT LAUGH at his appearance. Westies know that you are laughing at them and will hide. Westies have a lot of pride. Tell him how proud you are of him and always give him a treat after each grooming session. He will just strut.

When the dog is fully grown you probably won't have the time to do him by hand. You can learn to use a stripping knife. This takes practice to avoid cutting the hair instead of pulling it out but it is faster. It would be best to try to find a regional Westie club or a Westie breeder who shows their dogs that can teach you to strip your dog. It would be worth a long drive to have a session on stripping with someone who knows what they are doing.

If you have the patience and perseverance to strip your Westie you will be rewarded with a beautiful animal that looks the way a Westie was bred to look. The coat on ANY Westie can be improved by stripping. Once you have stopped bathing your dog and pulled the coat completely several times, you can get away with clipping him most of the year. But the coat should be stripped at least once a year to maintain the harsh self cleaning coat.

There are two books which have good sections on grooming with diagrams and pictures, John Marvin's The Complete West Highland White Terrier, and Ruth Faherty's Westies From Head to Tail (see Bibliography). These books provide more depth then we can provide here.

Ear Infections

Ear infections in dogs are an on going problem and about 10 % of Westies are susceptible to ear infections. Since a Westies ears are upright they don't get infections as easily as dogs with drop ears, but once they get an infection you will never be able to get rid of it permanently. A sign of an ear infection is your Westie digging at the ear and/or shaking its head. The ear canal will appear dirty with red or black ear wax. Normally there should be no ear wax in the dogs ear.

The trick to keeping your Westies ear infections under control is to continue the medication for a week to 10 days after the ear appears to be clean. The bacteria may still be in the ear canal and the additional medicine will kill the remaining germs and the ear will be clear for three to six months. The infection will come back eventually.

You will need to go to your Vet and get an ear cleaner, an antibacterial agent and an ear drying cream or powder. Different Vets use different products so we will not recommend a particular product.

Use the ear cleanser and apply it with a cotton swab. Clean out the ear as far down the ear canal as possible. Your Westie may complain but you have to do it so get tough and do it. Use several swabs until they come out clean. Once the ear is clean, apply the antibacterial agent. Do this twice each day.

Once the infection is gone, if the ear is excessively moist, use a drying creme every few days to keep the infection from starting up again. The ear will probably become infected again about every three months so frequently check the ears to see if they appear clean. We just keep the medicines on hand and treat the ear as needed. If the problem continues, go back to the Vet as you may need a different antibacterial agent.

It is imperative that you keep after ear infections. If it is chronic, the ear canal can swell shut, sealing in the bacteria and causing the dog to go deaf. In addition the dogs continued digging at the ear will break down the cartilage in the ear and it will flop over.

Andres writes: After wasting a ton of money to cure my Westie ear infection, nothing worked for almost a year. Thanks to the Internet, a gentleman from England gave me the following recipe:

Ten drops of this mixture was put in my dog's ears twice a day until the ears cleared up (it took about 5 days). After that I continued the application once a day for about one more week. My dog has not had any more ear problems, and that is more than a year ago. Every four to six weeks I put 10 drops in each ear to check for cleanliness.

We live in the Caribbean and our dog loves to swim in the ocean. She has no skin problems. It seems that salt water and sand do not affect her coating the way regular bathing did before we moved here.

Ear Taping

When Westies are born the ears are very small and stand up. By the time they are six weeks old the ears seem to have out grown the puppy and they fall forward. Normally by the time the puppy is twelve weeks old the ears come up by themselves. It is necessary to keep the hair on the back and front of the ear VERY short to help the ears come up. Trim the hair on the ears when the dog is tired after a good romp. To trim the hair on the back of the ear, put your finger part way in the ear and roll the ear around your finger. Take scissors and trim the hair on the back of the ear that sticks up as you roll the ear around your finger.

If you have concerns that the ears will not come up by themselves you can tape them. There are some lines of Westies have to have the ears of all their puppies taped.

Method 1 - To tape the ears, use any type of 1/2 inch (1.27 cm) wide medical tape. Be prepared to try several kinds until you find one that will stick. Have the hair inside and outside of the ear VERY short. Cut a piece of tape about 4 inches (10.16 cm) long. Place the middle of the strip of tape horizontal across the back of the puppies ear about 1/3 of the way down from the tip of the ear. Bring the ends of the tape around to the front of the ear crossing over each other to form an X in the front of the ear going down toward the ear opening. Press the tape tight to the ear and cut off any that sticks down in the ear itself that would tickle the puppies ear. Leave the tape on for at least two weeks. Replace it if the puppy works it off. Replace it even if the ear is up. It must be on long enough for the bent cartilage of the ear to grow straight. Two weeks should be enough but take the tape off for a while to prevent soreness. The taping may need to be repeated several times. When you do take the tape off, the ear may be rather funny shaped because of the dents the tape has created in the side of the ear. This will straighten itself out in a few days.

Get a super duty brown paper grocery sack from the grocery store. Cut out a slightly rounded triangle that will just fit the inside of the ear and extend down slightly into the ear for support. For best fit, shave all the hair from the inside of the ear and for best support, shave all the hair from the backside of the ear. Round or flex the paper into a shape that will fit the curve of the inside of the ear. Apply false eyelash glue to the paper. Be careful not to put to much on as it may ooze out from the sides but be sure to cover the edges. Push the glued side of the paper onto the inside of the ear (apply even pressure to all areas of the ear, especially the edges) an hold it until it sticks. The paper will naturally peel away from the ear within two weeks and the ear should stand. Keep water away from the ear during this process. Do not remove the paper prematurely; you may damage the skin inside the ear. You may need to repeat this process if the ear tissue is not thick or the cartilage is not strong enough during the first application period. When the paper peels off there will be a residue inside the ear from the glue. To remove this residue, shave the inside of the ear, as the residue should be attached to the hair that is re-growing in the previously shaved area.

John Marvin's book, The Complete West Highland White Terrier, Fourth Edition, has several other alternative methods to tape the ear and includes diagrams. He recommends taping both ears and then taping the ears together at the desired distance. I have used method 1 above the two times I have had to tape the ears of a puppy. I did not tape the ears until the puppies were about 16 weeks old but was successful each time. It will work on dogs as old as 10 months of age so keep at it.

Many years ago, one of my Westies had an eye infection, after many trips to the vet, it finally cleared up, however, she would get what my little son called "eye bugers" and had some staining under her eyes. I tried everything to fix this problem and nothing.

At the time an older lady with Poodles moved next door to me and of course we were talking dog talk, her Poodles were white, an didn't have eye stains, I asked her how she kept her dogs from getting the staining? Her answer was Distilled Water, she told me to give my dogs distilled water to drink and they wouldn't have any eye problems. I asked my Vet, and he said he had never heard of it, but the distilled water wouldn't hurt my dogs. I started giving distilled water only to both of my Westies, it took about 3 months, and to this day, neither one of my Westies has had eye infections, weepy eyes, or staining. Several of my friends had dogs over the years with eye infections and I told them about the distilled water, it seems to help. I don't know if its the answer, but it has worked for me. Westies are such bright eyed little creatures, this only makes their eyes brighter, hopefully it will work for you.

White grooming chalk (grooming powder) can be found at dog shows as well as some grooming shops and pet stores. You can also order it from the following dog specialty catalog(s). As we find other sources for the grooming powder we will add them here. If you know of other sources please let us know.

"CHERRYBROOK" 1-800-524-0820, Ring 5 Hard White Grooming Powder, Item 2-25, 10 oz, $4.25. (Spring 1999)

KEEP CHECKING THIS PAGE . More hints and tips will be added. If you have a hint or tip you think the Westie World would find helpful, send an Email to