August 6, 2024 • 11 mins
Every pet needs to have their nails trimmed and taken care of, and now you'll know the correct way to handle this, what is many times an, anxiety filled event. The Dog Professor, Robb Lust from the Edgefield Animal Care Center, details your pets nail and how to properly care for them.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's time for the Dog Professor podcast. Rob Lost from
the Edgefield Animal Care Center the Dog Professor sitting in
with us today as always, and today, my friend, we're
talking about something that brings anxiety to every pet household
in the entire world, and that is trimming toenails.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, that's one of the most high anxiety activities most
pet owners will ever have, and it's it's yeah, it's
not easy. Okay, it's not easy. So so here we're
going to give a few tips on how to do it,
how to be safe with doing it, and also just
kind of try to take that anxiety away a little
bit as possible. Easiest way to get your pet used
(00:40):
to having their toenails trimmed is to start when they're young. Okay,
don't wait until the next veterinary visit that you're taking
your pet in to get the toenails trimmed, or once
a year or two times a year when they're groomed
or whatever. Easiest way to do that is when they're
young a young puppy is to while you're holding them,
(01:00):
while you're petting them, while you're playing with them, always
be playing and petting and messing around with their paws
to the point where we're feeling the insides of the pads.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I'll take a puppy and as I'm rubbing their ears,
I'm also holding onto their paws, holding it gently so
they can't pull the pall away. I'm taking my finger
and pushing up inside between their pads, so I'm separating
the toes out a little bit. All the motions and
all the all the feelings that a dog would get.
When we start to fool with those toenails. Plus young puppies,
(01:35):
it's easy for you to start learning how to trim
the toenails, right, Okay, the easiest way to do it. Normally,
young puppies have kind of clear toenails. Sometimes they're they're
flat black, but a lot of times they're kind of opaque,
so you can see through them a little bit and
learning where the structures. Everybody's afraid to trim the toenails
(01:56):
for obvious reasons that they think if they're going to
get them too short, it's going to call the nail
to bleed, and that's the blood vein inside the nail
is called the quick and obviously that's a that's a
concern most times. But if you visualize and look at
the nail, you can pretty much see how far out
the quick comes. Most dog nails, if you look at
(02:18):
them from the side, are extremely thick, and they start
to taper towards the end, but then right before as
they taper and form, the where the quick stops is
basically when you're looking at that toenail and it turns
into a hook, right okay, for lack of a better
way to say it, It's like a pyramid up and
then with a hook on top. It's where that hook
(02:41):
starts is usually where the quick stops. Okay. So the
easiest way to learn this with young puppies is to
get a good set of toenail clippers. Now, the one
there's all kinds of toenail clippers out there. The easiest
ones the ones we use every day in grooming and
in our binary hospital. The ones we use are the
(03:02):
scissor type of clippers.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
They for years they made what was called the guillotine clippers,
which had a little hole at the top you'd stick
the nail in, you'd squeeze them, the blade would come
up like a guillotine and cut the nail. Those aren't
very effective. Because that blade gets dull very quickly and
it starts to pinch the nail rather than cut the nail.
(03:26):
So the scissor type. Scissor type clippers are the easiest.
They make small ones for when puppies are small and
their nails are very small, and then you can get
bigger ones as you grow. But that's that's the type
of toenail trimmer we recommend when we're doing toenails. Number two.
One of the easiest ways and one of the more
(03:48):
efficient ways and least anxiety ways to trim your dog's
toenails over the past few years has been to use
a rotary tool or a dremal with a sanding drum
on the end of it. That's how we use quite
a bit. The reason this is easy and the really
the only thing you have to get your dog used
(04:09):
to when you use this is one the noise of
the tool, okay, and two the restraint that you're going
to do. Yeah, okay. So I know, if you got
TikTok or whatever, and you got pet TikTok, you can
go on there and look and you see these people
they take this saran wrap and they wrap it around
their head and they put a big glob of peanut
butter on their head, and while they're holding the dog
(04:29):
doing the toenails, obviously the dog is paying attention to
the glob of peanut butter on their head, and it's
redirecting the dog's attention. Now, I'm not saying that's a
bad technique, go right for it, okay, but the redirection
of the dog's attention to something positive like that is
is definitely a good way to do it. You know,
(04:50):
you see it in grooming shops if you're you know you.
Restraint is hard for one person. It's hard to hold
a dog, hold the pall, trim the toenails. So it's
easier if you have some sort of setup like with
us a lot of times we'll do them in the tub,
but in our tub we have a noose that's attached
to the wall that holds the dog while we can
(05:11):
maneuver around and do things like that. So whatever is
the easiest and the least stressful in the beginning as
you're teaching your dog this, the better if you want
to redirect them towards something. Peanut butter is something that
a little bit goes a long way. Okay, a little
lick here there keeps the dog interested in what's going
on and not paying so much attention to the toenails.
(05:34):
But the drembal tool works well because all you do
is basically grind down the tips of the toenail down
to where the quick is, and if you accidentally get
into the quick, it pretty much cauterizes the quick as
long as you're paying attention. Okay, so the bleak chance
(05:55):
of bleeding is a lot less using the rotary dremal tool.
The problem is if you have a dog that has
hair between the pads of their feet or long hair
on their feet, the chances of that hair getting wound
around the bit on the drim waal tool is pretty high,
so you want to be aware of that as you go.
But the grinding of the nails tends to be a
(06:15):
lot safer, a lot less chance for bleeding to occur
than the actual clipping of the nails with the toenail clippers.
It's important if you're going to do your dog's nails
at home to make sure that you have some stiptic
powder at home, not a stiptic pencil for those of
you who don't know what a stiptic powder. A stiptic
pencil is basically it's a chemical compound that stops bleeding.
(06:38):
And it's easy. We use the powder because you can
take a Q tip, wet it down, put it in
the powder, press it on the nail if you happen
to get into the nail and start it to cause
it to bleed. Stiptic pencils are not as you know,
they're a little The powder is a bit bigger, heavy
hitter when it comes to bleeding then and nails will
(06:58):
bleed quite a bit, so it's important to get that
stopped as you go. It's important to keep your dog's
nails in shape because the nail does not quit growing.
Now some dogs, I've had dogs that have done this
before and cats. Some dogs will actually take care of
the nails themselves, whether they're chewing them, biting at them,
(07:20):
or actually grinding them down on certain surfaces. If your dog,
you walk your dog on pavement a lot sidewalks, you're
probably not going to have an issue with the nails
because they're going to grind themselves down and sand themselves down.
But if the dog doesn't have that a lot or
it spends a lot of time indoors and that those
nails grow. Those nails will grow around to the point
(07:43):
where it's almost impossible to trim them because the quick
continues to grow out with the nails. So the longer
the nail becomes, the longer the quick becomes, and you
can't trim it as short if the quick grows out.
So we want to keep them as short as we can,
and that keeps that quick under control as the dog grows,
(08:04):
But that nail will, and we've seen it before, that
nail will turn right around and grow back into the pad,
your dog's pad and cause a real problem. Also what
happens is the longer the nail becomes, the more brittle
it becomes, so the more likely it is that your
dog will break it off doing something and break it
(08:24):
off back towards the base of the nail where the
quick is and cause a real problem with bleeding, infection,
that type of thing. So the easiest thing to do
when dealing with the nails, number one, start with a
young dog right away to get them used to the pause.
You can use a redirection exercise like have them focused
(08:45):
on something on.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
With a treat.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You know, we talk about the saran wrap on the
head with peanut butter. Yeah, but I've seen also they
make products out there that stick to the wall of
your bathtub that you can put the dog in the bathtub,
restrain them a little bit, and do all that stuff
in the bathtub or on a table or something like that.
The more your dog is up off the ground and
out of your arms, the more the easier it is
(09:12):
to control your dog in that situation. In fact, back
to TikTok or online, you know there's there's slings. We
have them, we don't use them very often. For some reason,
French bulldogs are the ones always in the TikTok and
I can understand why, but it's a their four feet
are completely off the ground and then that now the
dog has no way to fight, you know, so it
(09:32):
just bothers. Yeah. So, but the redirection of your dog's
attention to something that's positive when the clippers come out,
is what we try to do. So clippers come out,
dremal comes out, turn the dremal on, lay the clippers
on the table, whatever you want to do. Then we
get a treat or then the peanut butter comes out next.
So pretty soon your dog is associating those tools with
(09:54):
something positive.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Number one.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Number two, when you take your dog to the vet
and they do their toenails, watch them ask them. We're
glad to advise people at all times, so our groomers
on the safest way and the easiest way to do
the dog's toenails, and also the safest and easiest way
to restrain your dog. Okay, you don't want to give
your dog a heart attack trying to do a couple toenails,
(10:18):
So it's important to learn all that as you go.
But the easiest way to do that is to get
your dog used to it as they grow full with
their paws, get them used to the tools, so forth
and so on, and then ask your professionals and we
can show you exactly how to do it.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Excellent. That's some really good stuff, good advice, and you know,
like you were saying, there's so many different techniques that
people use, but the best is making sure you have
somebody to help you. I think, right, that is the best.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It shouldn't take four people for a dog the size
of a French bulldog. Yeah, okay, but a lot of
times it does, and then you're war out. The dogs
were out. If it's up to that point, then there's
other options.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
To do resolutely good stuff. But your groomers can certainly
help with that on a regular basis and they can
get some training, they can see the doctors, whatever Edgefield
Animal Care Center can help them. Tell everybody how they
can reach out to you if you're in the area.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
If you're in the Central Ohio area, the Edgefield Animal
Care Center. We're a full service pet care facility, veterinary hospital, boarding, grooming, training,
all of that. Easiest way to find out all about
the Edgefield Animal Care Center is go on our website,
Edgefieldanimalcare dot com. Get all the information you need right
there Edgefieldanimalcare dot Com.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
There you go. He is the Dog Professor and this
is his podcast. And if you're just finding it, make
sure you hit follow wherever you get your podcasts so
you get a notification every time we post a new one.
It's time for the Dog Professor podcast. Rob Lost from
the Edgefield Animal Care Center the Dog Professor sitting in
with us today as always, and today, my friend, we're
talking about something that brings anxiety to every pet household
in the entire world, and that is trimming toenails.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Yeah, that's one of the most high anxiety activities most
pet owners will ever have, and it's it's yeah, it's
not easy. Okay, it's not easy. So so here we're
going to give a few tips on how to do it,
how to be safe with doing it, and also just
kind of try to take that anxiety away a little
bit as possible. Easiest way to get your pet used
(00:40):
to having their toenails trimmed is to start when they're young. Okay,
don't wait until the next veterinary visit that you're taking
your pet in to get the toenails trimmed, or once
a year or two times a year when they're groomed
or whatever. Easiest way to do that is when they're
young a young puppy is to while you're holding them,
(01:00):
while you're petting them, while you're playing with them, always
be playing and petting and messing around with their paws
to the point where we're feeling the insides of the pads.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I'll take a puppy and as I'm rubbing their ears,
I'm also holding onto their paws, holding it gently so
they can't pull the pall away. I'm taking my finger
and pushing up inside between their pads, so I'm separating
the toes out a little bit. All the motions and
all the all the feelings that a dog would get.
When we start to fool with those toenails. Plus young puppies,
(01:35):
it's easy for you to start learning how to trim
the toenails, right, Okay, the easiest way to do it. Normally,
young puppies have kind of clear toenails. Sometimes they're they're
flat black, but a lot of times they're kind of opaque,
so you can see through them a little bit and
learning where the structures. Everybody's afraid to trim the toenails
(01:56):
for obvious reasons that they think if they're going to
get them too short, it's going to call the nail
to bleed, and that's the blood vein inside the nail
is called the quick and obviously that's a that's a
concern most times. But if you visualize and look at
the nail, you can pretty much see how far out
the quick comes. Most dog nails, if you look at
(02:18):
them from the side, are extremely thick, and they start
to taper towards the end, but then right before as
they taper and form, the where the quick stops is
basically when you're looking at that toenail and it turns
into a hook, right okay, for lack of a better
way to say it, It's like a pyramid up and
then with a hook on top. It's where that hook
(02:41):
starts is usually where the quick stops. Okay. So the
easiest way to learn this with young puppies is to
get a good set of toenail clippers. Now, the one
there's all kinds of toenail clippers out there. The easiest
ones the ones we use every day in grooming and
in our binary hospital. The ones we use are the
(03:02):
scissor type of clippers.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
They for years they made what was called the guillotine clippers,
which had a little hole at the top you'd stick
the nail in, you'd squeeze them, the blade would come
up like a guillotine and cut the nail. Those aren't
very effective. Because that blade gets dull very quickly and
it starts to pinch the nail rather than cut the nail.
(03:26):
So the scissor type. Scissor type clippers are the easiest.
They make small ones for when puppies are small and
their nails are very small, and then you can get
bigger ones as you grow. But that's that's the type
of toenail trimmer we recommend when we're doing toenails. Number two.
One of the easiest ways and one of the more
(03:48):
efficient ways and least anxiety ways to trim your dog's
toenails over the past few years has been to use
a rotary tool or a dremal with a sanding drum
on the end of it. That's how we use quite
a bit. The reason this is easy and the really
the only thing you have to get your dog used
(04:09):
to when you use this is one the noise of
the tool, okay, and two the restraint that you're going
to do. Yeah, okay. So I know, if you got
TikTok or whatever, and you got pet TikTok, you can
go on there and look and you see these people
they take this saran wrap and they wrap it around
their head and they put a big glob of peanut
butter on their head, and while they're holding the dog
(04:29):
doing the toenails, obviously the dog is paying attention to
the glob of peanut butter on their head, and it's
redirecting the dog's attention. Now, I'm not saying that's a
bad technique, go right for it, okay, but the redirection
of the dog's attention to something positive like that is
is definitely a good way to do it. You know,
(04:50):
you see it in grooming shops if you're you know you.
Restraint is hard for one person. It's hard to hold
a dog, hold the pall, trim the toenails. So it's
easier if you have some sort of setup like with
us a lot of times we'll do them in the tub,
but in our tub we have a noose that's attached
to the wall that holds the dog while we can
(05:11):
maneuver around and do things like that. So whatever is
the easiest and the least stressful in the beginning as
you're teaching your dog this, the better if you want
to redirect them towards something. Peanut butter is something that
a little bit goes a long way. Okay, a little
lick here there keeps the dog interested in what's going
on and not paying so much attention to the toenails.
(05:34):
But the drembal tool works well because all you do
is basically grind down the tips of the toenail down
to where the quick is, and if you accidentally get
into the quick, it pretty much cauterizes the quick as
long as you're paying attention. Okay, so the bleak chance
(05:55):
of bleeding is a lot less using the rotary dremal tool.
The problem is if you have a dog that has
hair between the pads of their feet or long hair
on their feet, the chances of that hair getting wound
around the bit on the drim waal tool is pretty high,
so you want to be aware of that as you go.
But the grinding of the nails tends to be a
(06:15):
lot safer, a lot less chance for bleeding to occur
than the actual clipping of the nails with the toenail clippers.
It's important if you're going to do your dog's nails
at home to make sure that you have some stiptic
powder at home, not a stiptic pencil for those of
you who don't know what a stiptic powder. A stiptic
pencil is basically it's a chemical compound that stops bleeding.
(06:38):
And it's easy. We use the powder because you can
take a Q tip, wet it down, put it in
the powder, press it on the nail if you happen
to get into the nail and start it to cause
it to bleed. Stiptic pencils are not as you know,
they're a little The powder is a bit bigger, heavy
hitter when it comes to bleeding then and nails will
(06:58):
bleed quite a bit, so it's important to get that
stopped as you go. It's important to keep your dog's
nails in shape because the nail does not quit growing.
Now some dogs, I've had dogs that have done this
before and cats. Some dogs will actually take care of
the nails themselves, whether they're chewing them, biting at them,
(07:20):
or actually grinding them down on certain surfaces. If your dog,
you walk your dog on pavement a lot sidewalks, you're
probably not going to have an issue with the nails
because they're going to grind themselves down and sand themselves down.
But if the dog doesn't have that a lot or
it spends a lot of time indoors and that those
nails grow. Those nails will grow around to the point
(07:43):
where it's almost impossible to trim them because the quick
continues to grow out with the nails. So the longer
the nail becomes, the longer the quick becomes, and you
can't trim it as short if the quick grows out.
So we want to keep them as short as we can,
and that keeps that quick under control as the dog grows,
(08:04):
But that nail will, and we've seen it before, that
nail will turn right around and grow back into the pad,
your dog's pad and cause a real problem. Also what
happens is the longer the nail becomes, the more brittle
it becomes, so the more likely it is that your
dog will break it off doing something and break it
(08:24):
off back towards the base of the nail where the
quick is and cause a real problem with bleeding, infection,
that type of thing. So the easiest thing to do
when dealing with the nails, number one, start with a
young dog right away to get them used to the pause.
You can use a redirection exercise like have them focused
(08:45):
on something on.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
With a treat.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You know, we talk about the saran wrap on the
head with peanut butter. Yeah, but I've seen also they
make products out there that stick to the wall of
your bathtub that you can put the dog in the bathtub,
restrain them a little bit, and do all that stuff
in the bathtub or on a table or something like that.
The more your dog is up off the ground and
out of your arms, the more the easier it is
(09:12):
to control your dog in that situation. In fact, back
to TikTok or online, you know there's there's slings. We
have them, we don't use them very often. For some reason,
French bulldogs are the ones always in the TikTok and
I can understand why, but it's a their four feet
are completely off the ground and then that now the
dog has no way to fight, you know, so it
(09:32):
just bothers. Yeah. So, but the redirection of your dog's
attention to something that's positive when the clippers come out,
is what we try to do. So clippers come out,
dremal comes out, turn the dremal on, lay the clippers
on the table, whatever you want to do. Then we
get a treat or then the peanut butter comes out next.
So pretty soon your dog is associating those tools with
(09:54):
something positive.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Number one.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Number two, when you take your dog to the vet
and they do their toenails, watch them ask them. We're
glad to advise people at all times, so our groomers
on the safest way and the easiest way to do
the dog's toenails, and also the safest and easiest way
to restrain your dog. Okay, you don't want to give
your dog a heart attack trying to do a couple toenails,
(10:18):
So it's important to learn all that as you go.
But the easiest way to do that is to get
your dog used to it as they grow full with
their paws, get them used to the tools, so forth
and so on, and then ask your professionals and we
can show you exactly how to do it.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Excellent. That's some really good stuff, good advice, and you know,
like you were saying, there's so many different techniques that
people use, but the best is making sure you have
somebody to help you. I think, right, that is the best.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
It shouldn't take four people for a dog the size
of a French bulldog. Yeah, okay, but a lot of
times it does, and then you're war out. The dogs
were out. If it's up to that point, then there's
other options.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
To do resolutely good stuff. But your groomers can certainly
help with that on a regular basis and they can
get some training, they can see the doctors, whatever Edgefield
Animal Care Center can help them. Tell everybody how they
can reach out to you if you're in the area.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
If you're in the Central Ohio area, the Edgefield Animal
Care Center. We're a full service pet care facility, veterinary hospital, boarding, grooming, training,
all of that. Easiest way to find out all about
the Edgefield Animal Care Center is go on our website,
Edgefieldanimalcare dot com. Get all the information you need right
there Edgefieldanimalcare dot Com.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
There you go. He is the Dog Professor and this
is his podcast. And if you're just finding it, make
sure you hit follow wherever you get your podcasts so
you get a notification every time we post a new one.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!