Canine Nail Care

Nail trimming is useful for your dog’s health and simply makes your dog more comfortable to interact with. Trim your dog's nails regularly, ideally once or twice a month, to help ensure that your dog is healthy and happy. At the correct length, a dog’s nails do not touch the ground when the dog is in a normal standing position. Each nail will generally hover slightly above the surface and only make contact during movement.

Tools for Trimming Your Dog’s Nails

It is imperative to have the appropriate nail clippers for your dog. Be sure to only use clippers designed to trim your pet’s nails. The clippers should be sharp and rust-free. A common dog nail clipper is a scissor-style clipper.

Having a nail file or grinder can be helpful to smooth out any rough edges after you trim your dog’s nails with clippers. Nail filing or grinding is not necessary, but it adds a nice finishing touch.

It is important to have styptic powder on hand. It is a powder that stops minor bleeding. In an emergency, flour, corn starch, as well as direct pressure for 5 minutes, can be utilized to stop minimal bleeding.

Tips for Trimming Your Dog’s Nails

Nail trim problems often stem from trying to do too much at once and overwhelming your dog, yourself, or both! Breaking down the nail trim process into several components and working on each one individually makes for faster and much more pleasant progress. The following steps should be considered separate in the process of introducing your dog to nail trims. Only progress to the next step if your dog is comfortable with the previous step and is not showing signs of stress such as licking lips, yawning, wide eyes, tucked tail, pinned ears, looking away, leaning away, pulling paw away, shaking, trembling, struggling, refusing treats, etc. Each dog will progress at a different pace, so take things slowly and watch your dog carefully. Keep all training sessions short and simple while setting up to be successful.

How to Trim Your Dog’s Nails

Step 1) If you have never trimmed a dog’s nails or if your dog is extra wiggly, ask for some help from a more experienced person. Start with your dog in a down position or have your helper restrain, hold, and distract your dog. Talk to your dog in a calm assuring voice while you grab her paw and position it for the best view for the first toenail trim. Be sure to hold your dog’s paw so that you have complete visibility of the nail you are trimming.

Step 2) Make note of where you have positioned the trimmer on the nail and verify that the other nails and the pad of the paw being groomed are not in the cutting plane. This is especially important with wiggling dogs. It is better to regroup and try again than to

unintentionally amputate a nail or cut too far and nick the quick! Once your pair of sharp dog toenail clippers are positioned at an angle toavoid the quick, trim off just the edge of the toenail in a small sliver. You can always trim off more nail, but you do not want to trim too much and cut into the quick, the blood vessel inside the nail. Position the clippers and clip the nail edge off. Continue to praise and talk to your dog. Proceed only if your dog is not showing signs of stress. Praise and feed your dog treats as each nail is clipped.

Quick Nail Trimming Tips

• A flashlight can help you better see the blood supply area to better avoid it.

• Be careful not to trim too close to the quick, the blood supply of the nail, as

  this is painful. Taking small slivers off will help you with this. Always cut

  parallel to the bottom.

• Use very sharp clippers – this means replacing or sharpening them regularly.

  Dull clippers can cause pain as the nail gets squeezed.

• Trim small pieces of nail off more frequently rather than large chunks of nail less

  frequently. Remove small slivers of nail at a time by “shaving” or whittling the nails.

• Stick to trimming the thinner, pointy outer part of the nail rather than the thick nail bed.