Pamper your pooch with homemade, edible shampoos and treatments

Federal Way’s Lori Pacchiano’s French bulldog, Texas, hops into the bathtub.

“Do you see how he likes licking the water?” she said while scrubbing her pooch down.

He likes licking the water because the shampoo Lori is using to bathe Texas is basically delicious. It’s a strawberries and cream smoothie shampoo that she whipped up using all edible ingredients.

“The one thing I love about all of the ingredients is they really are safe for your dog to eat,” she said. “All dogs lick themselves so it’s really important to coat them with something they can digest.”

The recipe is just one that is included in the soon-to-be-published book “Dog Beauty Treats,” written by Lori and her brother Ryan.

“We have 50 different recipes in the book and they’re all inspired by beauty recipes that our grandma had years ago, and we just made them for dogs. So you can make dog wash, paw scrubs, allergy treatments, flea treatments, conditioners,” Lori said. “You can dye their hair with things like beets. I mean, you can really do everything to clean your dog with food.”

Lori and Ryan are not new to the pampering pooch biz.

“We also had a chain of stores, The High Maintenance Bitch,” she said. “The girls that worked in the stores wore French maid outfits and they would sing to the dogs when they came in. Like, if a dog pottied on the floor they would sing ‘Tinkle Tinkle Little Star.'”

The stores have since closed. But Lori and Ryan’s all-natural dog products are sold internationally, and have even been included in celebrity gift baskets at the Golden Globe Awards.

In true American entrepreneurial form, Lori kind of accidentally stumbled into her passion while working a corporate job.

“I had just read that book ‘Pour Your Heart Into It’ by Howard Schultz. It’s so good,” Lori said. “I literally read that book &#8212 I still haven’t finished it &#8212 like the first three chapters, and it was like, ‘what do you really want to do with your life?'”

“And I literally went home and made a feather boa dog collar,” she said. “I’m not kidding. I took it to the pet store and they were all, ‘If you make more of these, we’ll sell them.'”

Back in Ryan’s kitchen, Lori blends up a batch of Strawberry and Cream shampoo for Texas.

“The number one ingredient I’m going to put in it is strawberries,” she said. “Strawberries have salicylic acid in them so they naturally slough off your dog’s skin.”

Lori then cracked open a couple of eggs to add into the blender.

“Eggs are really important,” she said. “They create a natural foam. It’s nice to have a little bit of suds. But they’re also really high in protein, especially the yolk, so they’ll really nourish your dog’s coat.”

And then a little vinegar.

“Apple cider vinegar actually deodorizes your dog’s skin and it gives a really beautiful sheen to their fur,” Lori said.

Lori says conventional dog shampoos are full of chemicals that may eventually cause cancer and other illnesses.

“People spend thousands of dollars feeding their pets really high quality dog food but they’re still putting poison on their skin,” she said.