# Coat Repelling Water ?????



## mommatee (Jul 20, 2010)

When bathing your babies, do you have a problem with wetting their hair? What I mean is that my Chloes hair seems to repel water. It's hard getting her hair "wet" when bathing her.:blush:


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## Orla (Jul 5, 2009)

Does she have long hair?
Running your hands through it can help and also lifting it up so wetting in sections.


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## Cosy (Feb 9, 2006)

It's often caused by the conditioner which is protecting the hair. Also puppy coats can be a bit repellent. It's not a bad thing.


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## Kaijah (Apr 20, 2010)

It could be the conditioner or oil you use, but it could also just be her hair type.

Hair has three basic levels of porosity (hair's ability to absorb and retain moisture) - low, normal, or high. Prepare for some hair geekery! :blush:

Low porosity hair has a tightly bound cuticle layer, so it tends to resist manipulation. It's harder to get it wet, as it repels the water rather than readily absorbing it. If you were to try and do some sort of chemical or mechanical process, it wouldn't "take" as well. (Think of hair color that doesn't dye a deep shade, hair that is curled would go straight, etc.) It can suffer from using products with too much protein because of the way it accumulates.

Normal porosity is normal. It allows moisture to pass easily, but resists allowing too much in. Coloring/processing/etc tend to hold well (though these can damage the hair and increase its porosity). It doesn't require much maintenance overall.

High porosity hair has an open cuticle. It gets wet quickly, but also loses that moisture quickly. This kind of hair tends to be the result of accumulated damage (rough brushing, heat styling, etc) but genetics also play a part - curlier/wavier hair is more porous because of how the cuticle is arranged around all those bends. Benefits from a lot of conditioner, and oil.


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## Snowbody (Jan 3, 2009)

Kaijah said:


> It could be the conditioner or oil you use, but it could also just be her hair type.
> 
> Hair has three basic levels of porosity (hair's ability to absorb and retain moisture) - low, normal, or high. Prepare for some hair geekery! :blush:
> 
> ...


Interesting -- so how do you know all this? :thumbsup:


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## muchan (Feb 23, 2011)

Kaijah said:


> It could be the conditioner or oil you use, but it could also just be her hair type.
> 
> Hair has three basic levels of porosity (hair's ability to absorb and retain moisture) - low, normal, or high. Prepare for some hair geekery! :blush:
> 
> ...



from these 3 levels that u mentioned, which one is consider "good"? 
as u mentioned as well if the coat has the low porosity = result from using product with too much protein such as? use too much whitening+conditioner+oil? 

I love how you explain the problem


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## Kaijah (Apr 20, 2010)

Snowbody said:


> Interesting -- so how do you know all this? :thumbsup:


By being a gigantic biology geek with an interest in growing hair long. :w00t: It's talked about pretty extensively and in more detail in Chemical and Physical Behavior of Hair, but that text book is pretty hard to come by any more for a reasonable price. There are quite a few good online resources, though of course they're all marketed to human hair. The chemist on CurlTalk (



) is really good at explaining things more in depth, for example - she's talking about curly hair (since it is a curly hair focused site), but porosity applies to all hair, straight, wavy, curly, or kinked. Maltese hair is pretty similar to fine human hair, though.



muchan said:


> from these 3 levels that u mentioned, which one is consider "good"?
> as u mentioned as well if the coat has the low porosity = result from using product with too much protein such as? use too much whitening+conditioner+oil?
> 
> I love how you explain the problem


The "best" would be normal porosity, simply because it's the most balanced. But low porosity isn't really "bad" so to speak, it just requires a little more time to absorb conditioner, oil, etc.

The protein itself doesn't necessarily cause the low porosity, but it can exacerbate the problem, since the protein in shampoo/conditioner is going to try to bind with the protein in the hair (if it's a small enough protein molecule). Low porosity is generally just something you're born with - you don't really have to try to "fix" it. 

I can't say if it's the result of a certain shampoo/conditioner, if that was what caused the hair to repel water - not all products have protein. If they do, it will generally say something like "_____ protein" or "hydrolized ____" on the ingredient list. That ____ can be keratin, wheat, silk, soy collagen, oat flour, or amino acids. It wouldn't be the oil, though, I don't think - oil is just fat, not protein.

I do try to help!


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## mommatee (Jul 20, 2010)

Thanks for the info. Do any other Malt owners have this same problem?


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## gopotsgo (May 21, 2009)

My Audrey's coat also seems to repel the water, unlike my Lily's coat. It was worse when I first adopted her, she is a rescue, and seems better now. I attributed this to the natural oils since before we had her I'm sure she wasn't bathed very often. I also joke that my Audrey is part lab, or is channeling some hunting dog way back in her ancestors, LOL. She actually goes into a pointing stance when she sees something she wants to chase, LOVES chasing birds, squirrels, etc., and will actually sound like she is baying sometimes! So, like all those hunting/retriever doggies, her coat still repels water! Here she is, my sweet little Audrey, we call her "our hunter dog", LOL!


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