Dermagic is a natural pet skincare range — created in 2006 by a chemist who refused to lose her dog to a skin disease. Here’s how it began, what’s in it, and how the four-step system works.
The story: a chemist, a Yorkie, and a vet who said it was time to put her down
Dermagic exists because a vet once recommended euthanasia for a show dog named Shenanigan.
Dr. Adelia Ritchie — a PhD organic chemist, dog breeder, and at the time an organic chemistry lecturer — had taken her prize-winning Yorkshire Terrier through every standard veterinary protocol available. Steroids, antibiotics, cortisone shots. Shenanigan only got worse: thick black skin, a permanent bad odour, constant crying and scratching. The vet’s final advice was to end it.
Dr. Ritchie went home and started formulating instead.
The first prototypes used natural, herbal and organic ingredients — vegetable oils, essential oils, plant butters. Shenanigan was dunked, slathered, and re-tested. After a handful of trials, the formula that became DERMagic Skin Rescue Lotion worked. The crying stopped within hours. New hair was sprouting within 48 hours of the first treatment. Within six months, Shenanigan was back in full coat and back in the show ring.
For nearly two decades after that, Dr. Ritchie used the formulations on family pets, friends’ dogs, and animals belonging to colleagues in the show world. In 2006, after a friend told her “Adelia, you owe it to the world to get these products to market,” DERMagic Skin Care for Animals, Inc. was incorporated.
Dermagic Europe is the UK and European supplier of the range — the same formulations, the same principles, distributed from Waterford, Ireland.
The principle: relief without steroids or harsh chemicals
Steroids — cortisone, prednisone — suppress the itch without identifying what caused it. That is genuinely useful in the short term and genuinely a problem as a long-term strategy, and the real risk is subtler than the version this page used to give. We used to write that “disrupted immunity invites mange mites and bacteria to move in”. We have withdrawn that: there is no good evidence that anti-inflammatory steroid doses multiply mites. The actual danger is that a steroid masks a mange case while the dog stays infested and contagious — set out properly in our guide to mites and mange.
Dermagic was built on a different premise: work on the skin rather than on the immune system, keep the surface clean, keep the barrier intact, and give recovery the conditions to happen. This sentence used to read “support the skin, kill the pathogens topically, and let the animal’s own immune system rebuild.” The middle clause is withdrawn. We do not claim our products kill organisms — and a product that did make that claim would be presenting itself as a veterinary medicine rather than a skincare range.
Every product is built on certified organic whole-leaf aloe vera gel, vitamin E, organic shea butter, beeswax, essential oils and plant oils. No artificial perfumes, no synthetic dyes, no parabens, no sulphates. Made in the USA with domestic ingredients.
Two smaller edits to that list. We have dropped “therapeutic” from “therapeutic essential oils” — they contribute scent and, with peppermint, a cooling sensation, and we cannot show more than that. And we have dropped “completely non-toxic to pets and people”: these are products for animals, they are not assessed as human cosmetics, and the range does contain essential oils that should be kept away from cats.
“No parabens” is true, and we have stopped treating it as an argument. It is on the labels, it is checkable, and we are not withdrawing it — but the case against parabens does not hold up, and the ingredients the industry replaced them with turned out to cause more allergy than the ones they displaced. The claim worth making instead is the specific one: the bars contain no water, so they need no preservative at all, while the water-containing products in the range are preserved and we publish with what. That table, and the full reckoning with what we previously said about parabens and SLS, is in parabens and SLS in dog shampoo.
The four-step Dermagic system
The system treats the root cause and supports recovery in four steps. Used in order, it tackles itching, restores damaged skin, and helps the coat grow back.
Step 1 — Peppermint and Tea Tree Oil Shampoo & Conditioner
Before any topical treatment, the skin needs to be properly cleansed — a lotion massaged into an unwashed, greasy coat never reaches skin. The shampoo is sulphate-free, using coco-glucoside derivatives and betaines instead, and the conditioner makes a dense coat combable afterwards. We no longer describe either as “pH-balanced for dogs”: canine surface pH runs across a wide range rather than sitting at a single value, so there is no one figure to match.
For a greener alternative, the Certified Organic Shampoo Bars require no conditioner and leave the coat squeaky clean — easier to handle, longer-lasting, no plastic bottle.
Step 2 — Skin Rescue Lotion
The core of the system. For general itchiness, hot spots, seborrhoea, severe Black Skin Disease (Alopecia X), or significant hair loss, massage the lotion into the affected areas twice daily. A soft t-shirt over the dog keeps the lotion on the skin and stops them licking it off.
Once the disease is under control, switch to Hot Spot Salve for any stubborn spots that remain.
Step 3 — Hot Spot Salve
A more concentrated version of the Skin Rescue Lotion, made to stick to wounds. Use it on hot spots, minor wounds, insect bites, localised allergic reactions, and any small inflamed or itchy area. Once or twice a day until symptoms disappear.
Keeping a tin handy is the right move for any small bite or cut — it prevents secondary infection before it starts.
Step 4 — Cell Restoration Crème
As the skin heals and fur begins to grow back, the Cell Restoration Crème supports the final recovery. Massage in as needed to soften and protect new skin, speed cell regeneration, and boost cellular immunity to prevent reinfection.
It’s also the product to reach for in winter — cracked pads, chapped noses — and in summer for scorched feet.
For especially dry or dandruff-prone skin
The Dead Sea Anti-Dandruff Salt Scrubs complement the system by physically exfoliating the skin just before bathing, which makes the wash considerably more effective on a heavily scaled coat. We have cut two things from this entry: “detoxification”, which describes nothing a salt scrub does, and the claim that the essential oils are “relaxing for the pet and stimulating for the skin”, which we cannot show.
Cats too
DERMagic for cats is a parallel range, and the thing that makes it a feline range is that it is formulated without tea tree oil — cats groom whatever you apply straight back off and swallow it, and are more vulnerable to essential oils than dogs. The Rosemary Shampoo Bar and Feline Skin Rescue Lotion are biodegradable and free from artificial dyes and fragrances.
We used to describe this range as “formulated specifically for feline pH” and the products as “non-toxic, pH-balanced”. Both withdrawn. There is no single feline skin pH to formulate to, and the bar is a saponified soap sitting at around pH 9–10 — alkaline, not balanced. It rinses off, which is what keeps that from mattering. The full account is in our guide to the feline bar.
Do not use the dog shampoo or conditioner on a cat. Those contain tea tree oil, and a cat is the species that will ingest it. For the evidence behind that — a 443-case veterinary review of tea tree poisoning, why cats are the higher-risk species, and what we can and cannot claim about the oil — see is tea tree oil safe for dogs and cats.
Where to start
If your pet is struggling with hot spots, hair loss, Black Skin Disease, allergies, or persistent itching, the Skin Rescue Lotion is the single product to begin with. For a full course, the four-step Dermagic System covers everything from the initial bath to final recovery.
The complete range is at dermagic.eu, shipped from our Irish warehouse — €9.99 flat to anywhere in the EU, tracked, with no customs to pay. For specific product guidance email customerservice@dermagic.eu or call +44 7425 388643.
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DERMagic Skin Rescue Lotion
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