Home › Blogs › mia's blog

Afraid of the nail cutter

mia's picture
Tue, 05/13/2008 - 13:42 — mia

Hi Aidan,

Seems like I always turn to you whenever I run into a stumble block with my dogs :-) Becky and Ben are both spayed and neutered now, smooth process for both. Becky no longer goes after children since we had a "little helper", a fearless 4-year-old who visited often and got Becky used to being around small people.

We adpoted a female Basset Hound and Dachshund cross called Bonnie a while ago, she is now almost 9 months old and cute as a button. She is normally a very happy puppy, but she is scared of the nailcutter. Bonnie's nails grows fast despite of the daily walks and all that digging she does, but everytime she sees me with a nailcutter she just scoots away. Once I put the nailcutter and her favourite treat side by side, she didn't dare to go after the treat, just sat and looked worried. She has never bled from the nailcutter, I guess she just doesn't like how it operates on her nails (only the "guillotine" type is available here) and the sound it makes. She was okay with it as a puppy, but as she grows older she gets more apprehensive. How to I ease her fear towards the nailcutter? It's getting impossible to cut her nails these days.

Cheers!
Mia

Comments

Wed, 05/14/2008 - 09:52 — Aidan
Aidan's picture

Hi Mia, the COOLEST way to

Hi Mia, the COOLEST way to trim nails is to make up a file board by gluing a sheet of sand-paper to a suitable piece of wood and have your dog file his OWN nails. I think this was Shirley Chong's idea - if it wasn't it is the sort of idea she would come up with :-)

To start with you teach your dog to paw at something that's not abrasive, and make sure that the nails are scraping the board, not the paws (although it probably doesn't matter much, you're not using a coarse abrasive at any time).

But I must admit that a lot of people don't have the time or inclination to be THAT cool.

Then again, sometimes doing it the old fashioned way can take just as long... depends on how terrified your dog is of having her nails trimmed.

Like every other training idea you will ever hear uttered from my lips or penned by my hand, you must always set your dog up for success. If you don't get success you have nothing to reinforce, if you have nothing to reinforce then nothing is learned.

So, start without nail clippers.

You should be able to touch each of your dog's nails on each paw at first. Your dog should be calm and relaxed while this goes on. This is normally pretty easy to teach.

Then raise the criteria by holding each paw and holding each toe. Use plenty of clicks and treats to reinforce calm, accepting behaviors.

Then raise the criteria by using something that approximates nail clippers, say a metal tea-spoon, and touch each toe of each paw.

While all this is going on, make a habit of having the nail clippers in sight when you're NOT working on any of the above. Don't even think about using them, just have them lying around.

When you can touch each nail on each paw with a tea-spoon and your dog stays calm, relaxed and accepts this without fuss - then introduce the nail clippers.

At first, do the same thing you did with the tea-spoon, but without clipping nails.

When you can do this, just clip ONE nail, click and treat and end the session.

Over the next 17 days (15 if your dog is missing dewclaws, 19 if your dog has 4 dewclaws, 21 if your dog is really unique and has double-dewclaws), clip one nail per day, click and treat and end the session.

You could probably quite happily clip more than one nail per day, but let some time elapse between each clip and pack up after each nail.

Don't stress about how long it takes, nails will generally not grow too much faster than they can be worn down by normal activity and it will be a LONG time before they become so long that they cause problems. You will have this trained well before that happens.

Regards,
Aidan
http://www.positivepetzine.com