Following yesterday's question about showering, I was really interested in how often everyone brushes their teeth. I know dentists recommend 1-3 times a day, with once being like "you'll be fine if you do it properly," and thrice being like "yo, don't brush too hard because you can damage your enamel," but I also know a lot of people do it more than three times a day and I suspect a lot of people do it less than once a day...

I try to do it twice a day...sometimes I miss my evening brushing because one of our cats sleeps in the bathroom so that she has her own space and if the dog (who wants to eat the cats) is already in the bedroom, sometimes I don't feel like escorting him out first. Not great, but at least I'll get it in the morning. And I do sometimes forget in the morning on weekends, but I try to do it as soon as I realize that I've forgotten, and I try to make sure I don't skip nighttime brushing if I forgot to brush in the morning.

I'm interested to know how often people shower or bathe - but I'd also be interested on your thoughts about other people's frequency. Do you feel strongly about how often one should be cleaning themselves, and what factors go into this? I would certainly hope it's reasonably frequent for warm-climate athletes, for example.

I struggle with trichotillomania which is a compulsion to pluck my own hair. Mine is focused primarily on my beard, resulting in unsightly bare patches. I am working through the mental health component of this condition already, but a better hair and skin care regiment could help reduce the triggers that start me plucking hairs.

I keep my beard relatively close cropped to my face. When the hairs in my bald patches start to regrow there is typically a lot of irritation which starts me touching my face, which leads me to find bumps like zits and blackheads and “weird hairs”, like kinky hairs, hairs growing in the wrong direction, particularly hard or soft hairs, anything that feels off when I run my fingers over them. This has the side effect of depositing more dirt and oils from my fingers onto my face, which creates a kind of feedback loop where the dirtier my face is the more I want to touch it, and the more I touch it the dirtier it gets. When I encounter these bumps and weird hairs I will want to pick at them and I won’t stop thinking about it until I do. It is a real struggle that I am working through and I figure if I can reduce that irritation that triggers it I’ll be less likely to touch and therefore pluck.

What I am hoping to find here are general care tips I can use for my short-cropped beard. What kind of products do you use for both the hairs themselves and your face, what methods do you use to trim, etc.? Currently I wash my face with a cleanser, followed by a toner, then a serum or lotion, but I don’t use any products specifically for my beard hairs themselves. I trim with an electric razor when my beard is between .5 and 1 inches long and I’ll trim it down to about 1/8 of an inch, or whatever setting 7, 8, or 9 is on my razor.

I'm sure most of the nail salon choices near me are fine, but I'm going to have to choose. Are there any red flags I should look for? Are there indications of quality that aren't the same as most expensive option? Any advice would be helpful.

I have a cavalier king charles spaniel that has had some unfortunate health issues for the past few years. The most pressing one that I haven't been able to nail down and fix is her GI issues. Every now and then, she has an all night bout of diarrhea even though the only food she has eaten is her hydrolyzed protein dog food. I remember reading about FMT years ago for people who had GI issues and I'm wondering what the results have been for dogs (and other animals). It seems counter intuitive to fight shit with more shit, but at this point I am willing to try most non-invasive treatments. While taking her to the dog park and asking other dog owners if my dog can eat their dog's poo would be the cheapest option, instead I found a site that purportedly has capsules available.

https://doggybiome.com/dog-products-for-diarrhea/

However, because it is difficult to find more information about this company and because I don't want imagine how this type of business (if it worked) could scale up as an industrial factory farm, I am skeptical.

Any thoughts on treating IBD in dogs for an allergy prone, and sensitive dog? She is already getting fiber and she sometimes gets probiotic with her food.