Clipping your dog's nails can be a real challenge for a lot of dog owners,
but are you making it even more challenging by using the wrong tool in your
trimming? In today's video instructor,
Robbie is gonna show you the benefits and drawbacks of using these popular nail
clipping tools.
And she's going to show you how to use a nail clipper and a nail grinder
correctly because using these tools,
the wrong way can be worse than not trimming your dog's nails at all.
I'm Ken Steepe. This is our demo dog Sprite. And this is instructor Robbie.
Welcome back to McCann Dogs.
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Member. I'm instructor Robbie, and I've been training dogs for over 25 years.
Over the years,
I've had many students come and ask me about what tool they should be using for
trimming their dog's nails. And my answer to that, it depends.
We asked our YouTube audience what they were using to trim their dogs toenails.
And more 50% of you responded and said you were using clippers.
Is that because you don't know about this tool,
we're gonna come back and talk about the clippers a little bit later,
but first we wanna show you how to properly use the grinder.
Good girl.
You may have noticed that Sprite barely even batted an eyelash when I turned the
grinder on.
And one of the most common concerns that people have about using this,
this particular tool is the fact that many dogs are really afraid of the sound.
And, um,
if you want more information about how to build your dog's confidence with tools
like the grinder, or like the nail clippers,
then click the link below and you can watch the video that I recently did with
Lucy. Sprite is so relaxed, lying here on her side, on the couch,
which is wonderful because it makes trimming so much easier for me.
But this is something I start with my dogs. When they're young,
I teach them how to lie on their side so that I can do their nail trimming.
Now I know that your dog may not be able to do that quite yet.
And that's all right.
You may choose to simply have your dog stand or sit while you're trimming their
nails.
And you can check out our previous nail trimming you in order to find out how to
do that. So while she's lying here on her side,
it also gives us a great opportunity to zoom in nice and close so that you can
see what I'm doing as I'm actually grinding her nail.
So what I'll do is I'll start by making sure that I have a hold of her foot and
I just wanna hold her foot comfortably. I don't wanna squeeze it tight.
I don't wanna pull it toward it's me. I just wanna hold it.
So I have control of it. And then from there,
turn on my grinder and I start grinding.
If you have a dog with a really furry foot,
some breeds have a lot of hair on their feet.
You might want to take some water or dunk your dog's foot in some water and just
paste the hair out of the way.
So that way the hair is not getting caught in the grinder.
Sprite doesn't have a lot of hair on her feet. So I don't really,
we need to worry about that. But when I'm using the grinder,
I'm going to use it to round the edges of her nail.
So that way I don't wind up with sharp nail,
that cuts if she happens to jump on me or that, um, is overly sharp.
And what I'll do is I'll start just by touching the grinder to the end of her
nail. I move it to the side, round that edge, move it to the other side,
round that edge, bring it up to the top of her nail, round off that little tip.
And I just take off a little bit at a time, but the whole time I'm doing that,
I'm being very careful that I'm not holding the grinder in place for one period
time. That's too long,
where I run the risk of cutting into the quick or hitting the quick,
I just wanna take off tiny bits at a time. Good girl.
So that way I have a nice successful cut.
In all my years of using this grinder to trim my dogs toenails,
I have never once hit my dogs quick.
And the reason for that is this particular tool allows me a lot of accuracy as
I'm trimming. As I'm using the grinder, I can see where the blood vessel is,
where that quick is, and I can avoid grinding down to that spot.
So it's a great tool for a lot of accuracy. Now, as much as I love this tool,
there are some things you need to be aware of when using a grinder.
First thing we need to do is teach the dog to be comfortable with the sound,
the grinder. And I can do that just simply by starting, turning it on,
rewarding her And then turning it off.
So she learns the good stuff comes when this sound suddenly comes on.
Now, notice when I rewarded her, I rewarded her with her nose over here.
I did not bring her nose over here to reward her.
And the reason for that is because I want her to understand that the
reinforcement comes from this place because the last thing I want her to do as
I'm grinding is turn around and put her nose too close to the grinder.
I want her nose to stay over there, away from the grinder. Now,
in addition to teaching the dog to become comfortable with the sound,
we also need to teach them to be comfortable with the feel of the grinder on
their toe. And you can simply start by picking up their foot,
not even turning it on, yes. Touching it to their toe,
just so she feels it. And then I reward over there. Good girl.
And then from there I can progress to turning it on. Yes.
Touch it to her toenail reward over there. Good girl. Now did you know,
there are two different styles of clippers that you can use, the trim,
your dog's toenails. We have the scissor style and the guillotine style.
Now with the scissor style,
you hold it essentially like you would hold a pair of scissors.
On many of these scissor style trimmers, there is a guard or a guide.
It's a little movable part that sits close to the blades.
And essentially it's meant to prevent you from cutting off too much of your
dog's toenail. But you'll notice that mine don't have the guard.
And the reason for that is because I've removed it.
I don't use the guard simply because if I was to place my dog's toenail into the
clippers right up to the guard, guaranteed, I would cut into the quick,
because I like to keep my dog's toils short. So if you have a guard or a guide,
we suggest that you either remove it or move it off to the side.
So you're not using it. Now with the guillotine style of tremor,
there is a right way and a wrong way of holding this particular tool.
There is a movable side and a stationary side,
and what we need to do to hold it correctly is put the stationary part in the
palm of our hands, the movable part in our fingers.
And the reason for that is because when I line up the dog's toenail, to trim,
I wanna make sure that when I squeeze the handle,
the blade or the guillotine slide straight up and gives me a nice clean cut.
If I was to hold these incorrectly with the movable part in the palm of my hand
and the stationary part in my fingertips, when I line up the dog's toenail,
to trim and I squeeze,
you can see the head of the trimmer rocks back. And when that happens,
I wind up cutting off a lot more of the toenail thanI originally intended.
So before I clip the nail,
what I need to do is I need to figure out where the quick is.
And I've specifically chosen the white toenail, because you can see the quick,
and if you look here,
there is a pink part that ends right about here.
And the rest of that is toenail that I could easily clip off,
but I don't wanna cut into the pink part of the toenail where the quick is. Now,
when I cut,
I'm gonna make my first cut by just taking off the very tip of her
toenail. Yes. Good girl. And I can reward that.
But then what I need to do from there is I need to round the edges a little bit
by trimming the sides. So I'm going to clip the side off a little bit,
clip the other side off. That's a good girl,
and I'm gonna trim off the very top part of the nail.
Just the very top part of the edge, where I had originally clipped.
Now I can see already that my clippers are not very sharp because there's
a little bit of, um, shreded toenail there now. Not gonna hurt her,
but it is a little shreded because my clippers aren't as sharp as they should be
now, because my guillotine clippers are not very sharp.
You can see how they shreded her nail. I'm not going to use these ones.
I'm going to switch over and I'm going to use my scissor style trimmer.
Now these are my own personal trimmers. I know they're sharp.
And one of the things I like about the clippers is that they allow you to get
the job done more quickly than the grinder with the of the dog has to be more
patient,
because the grinding process does take a little bit longer as opposed to the
clipper where it's just one clip, done. And then if you wanna round off the, um,
edges a little bit, you can do that,
but it is a lot quicker with the clippers as opposed to with the grinder.
Good girl.
Yes. Good girl. Now, unfortunately,
there are several disadvantages to using clippers. First of all,
if your clippers are not sharp enough, if the blades are not sharp enough,
they will shred the nail. And that happened to me with the guillotine style,
which is why I switched over to using my own clippers, which I know are sharp.
But the other thing is that they can leave very sharp edges as well,
especially if I don't take the time to round off the edges.
And even when I round off the edges with clippers,
I find there are still some sharp edges.
And then the biggest drawback to using the clipper is the fact that there's more
room for error. And there's a greater chance that as I'm clipping,
I could potentially hit the quick. For such a popular tool.
There are several disadvantages to using the clipper.
My personal go-to is using the grinder.
Now I do teach my dogs to tolerate having their nails clipped just for the sake
of a training exercise. But when I'm doing their nails,
this is the tool that I use for the job.
Now it's not to say that I won't use clippers.
Sometimes I'll use my clippers first.
And then I'll take a couple moments at the very end to grind the edges so that
they're not so sharp. Now,
nail care is only a small part of the grooming process.
There are a lot of other things that your dog will need to learn to tolerate
when it comes to grooming. And if you want more grooming tips,
click that link right there,
handling and nail trimming is only a small part of the dog training process.
If you're looking for some personalized support from the McCann Dogs instructor,
you can join us in our online training programs,
click the link in the description below. And on that note,
I'm instructor Robbie, this is Sprite. Happy training.