Q&A: Can you wash your pets in the tub?

A cat playing with sink water

I heard that washing your dogs in the bathtub is a bad idea because their fur is thicker than hair and will clog your drains. Is that true and how do plumbers wash their pets if they don’t use a bathtub?

This is both true and false.

Fur is, for sure, thicker than hair — yet either one can clog your pipes. The majority of shallow drain clogs are caused by hair and soap clumping in your piping.

If your dog sheds a lot, washing him in the tub will cause quite a bit of fur to go down the drain.

That doesn’t mean you can’t was your pets in the tub though — you just need to take the correct precautions. If your dog rolls around in the mud, he’s going to need a bath. Don’t hold back!

Buying a $5 plastic drain screen can solve the problem for you. Place the drain screen in the drain when you want to give your dog a bath. The screen will catch 100% of the fur, keeping your pipes clog free. Dump the hair out of the screen into the trash, and it’ll be good for next time.

WHAT IF I HAVE BEEN WASHING MY PETS IN THE TUB?

Don’t panic.

If you suspect you may have clogged your drain, we can inspect your pipes for drain clogs. If you do have a clogged piped, we can take care of it – no mess, no hassle.

We just wouldn’t recommend that you use a chemical drain cleaner. Harsh chemicals often destroy your pipes along with the plumbing clogs they were meant to target. Don’t take the bad situation of a clogged pipe and make it worse.

When you call Benjamin Franklin Plumbing to clear a clogged pipe, we use professional-grade equipment to annihilate drain clogs with no mess and no harmful chemicals.

Contact us for a drain inspection or drain cleaning.

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