Five things to look at, once a month, with your hands and your nose. No kit needed, just you and the dog. Published by Myrven, a British skin & coat brand. We teach this because the more you know, the better their coat gets, whoever you buy from, including nobody.
1. The shine
Run your palm slowly from neck to tail, with the coat, in good light.
A healthy coat has an even, soft sheen and springs back where you've stroked it. A dull, brittle or greasy coat isn't a diagnosis. It's a prompt to look closer at the other four checks. Two things worth knowing. Hair is up to 95% protein by dry weight, so a coat reflects what's been going on inside for weeks rather than what happened today. And a glossy coat isn't a health check: "shiny" is subjective enough that when eight vets scored the same dogs, agreement between them on glossiness was barely better than chance. The dermatologists in the group were the most consistent with their own repeat scores, which is rather the point: the authors concluded that coat scoring is only reliable if the same person does it every time.
2. The skin underneath
Part the fur in three places and look at the skin itself: shoulders, base of the tail, one flank.
You're hoping for calm, even-coloured skin. Redness, scabs, dark patches or lots of white flake are worth noting. One specific thing to check: if the "dandruff" seems to move, that's a surface mite called Cheyletiella, nicknamed walking dandruff. It spreads readily between pets, some animals carry it with barely a sign, and it can give people a temporary itchy rash, though it can't live or breed on human skin. That one's a vet visit, not a shampoo fix.
3. The smell
Cup your hands into the coat and smell them, somewhere the dog can't easily lick.
Dogs smell like dogs. That's normal. A strong, greasy smell that returns within a day or two of a bath, alongside redness or scratching, can be yeast overgrowth on the skin. But ears, teeth, anal glands and greasy-coat conditions all cause odour too, and it's confirmed by a vet looking at cells under a microscope, not by smell alone. And a myth worth retiring: it isn't bathing that causes trouble, it's what you bathe them with. Washing-up liquid or human shampoo disrupts the skin's natural balance. A proper dog shampoo doesn't. For a genuinely itchy dog, vets often recommend bathing more, not less.
4. The shedding pattern
Think about what you've hoovered up lately.
Most dogs shed more in spring and autumn, when day length and temperature are both shifting. Which of the two matters more has honestly never been tested properly in dogs. Breed matters more than season: about 98% of a poodle's follicles sit in the growing phase, while arctic breeds cycle in sync, which is why one blows its coat and the other doesn't.
What isn't a normal moult: coin-sized bald patches, or matching thin patches on both sides. Some causes of that are harmless and settle on their own. Others aren't. They look identical from the outside, which is why it's a vet's call rather than a guessing game.
5. The behaviour
For one evening, just notice: how often do they scratch, lick their paws, or rub their face?
Every dog scratches sometimes. It's the pattern that tells you something: the same spot again and again, licking that interrupts sleep, chewing at paws until they're stained. Two honest notes from the research. The most commonly reported food allergens in dogs are beef, dairy and chicken, though wheat sits fourth, so grain-free doesn't automatically mean allergy-free. And no supplement, from us or from anyone, is a treatment for skin disease. If your dog seems uncomfortable, the vet comes first. Always.
Want the printable version?
That is the whole check. The hard part is remembering to do it again next month.
Give us an email address and we will send you a one page printable version to stick on the fridge, then a short nudge once a month to actually run it. That is the entire mailing list. No sequence, no funnel, nothing to buy.
We use your email to send you the checklist and the monthly reminder, and nothing else. We do not sell it or pass it to anyone. Unsubscribe from any email and we stop immediately. When the softgel is ready you will hear about it first, with a founding customer price, and you can ignore that too.
What a coat is built from
The skin builds itself from what's in the bowl. Hair is up to 95% protein by dry weight, and in small, long-coated breeds daily hair growth can call on up to 30% of the protein in the diet. That is why coat is one of the first things to look tired when nutrition slips, and one of the slowest to come back.
The omega-3s that matter most for skin are EPA and DHA, pre-formed, from fish. Dogs convert very little of them from plant oils, which is why flaxseed and rapeseed are not equivalent to fish on this particular job. They work slowly: fed daily, they are built into new skin cells over weeks rather than days. The living layers of a healthy dog's epidermis take somewhere around 21 to 23 days to renew, so anyone promising overnight shine is selling you something.
More is not better. The National Research Council sets a safe upper limit for EPA and DHA in dogs, about 2,080mg a day for a 10kg dog. Past that, the best-documented effect is loose stools.
That is the whole of the nutritional story, and it is deliberately unexciting. Feed a complete diet, give it months rather than weeks, and see a vet about anything that looks like a condition rather than a coat.
Sources: ESCCAP UK & Ireland; Bond et al., Veterinary Dermatology 2020 (WAVD consensus guidelines); Welle & Wiener, Toxicologic Pathology 2016; Devriendt et al., Vlaams Diergeneeskundig Tijdschrift 2021; Mueller, Olivry & Prélaud, BMC Veterinary Research 2016; Lenox & Bauer, J Vet Intern Med 2013; Watson, J Nutr 1998; Kwochka, Am J Vet Res 1989; Hand et al., Small Animal Clinical Nutrition 5th ed.; Discepolo et al., Frontiers in Veterinary Science 2023. This guide is general education, not veterinary advice. For anything worrying, your vet knows your dog.
Myrven makes a daily skin and coat softgel for dogs. This guide is not about it and does not depend on it. If you want to see what we make, it is on its own page here.