How do you know when your dogs nails are too long?

Alfasudcrazy

I am not sure about the length of my dogs nails - whether they are too long and need clipping. How can you tell when its time and do unclipped nails hurt the dogs toes etc?

Any experts on this as I don't fancy spending big bucks at the vets every time this has to be done?

Gillie

Not sure but the vet once told me that plenty of roadwalking can prevent the nails getting too long!

Alfasudcrazy

Yes I heard that too but my dogs never walk on the roads nowadays (too much of a handful) - its all sand or grass so there is nothing to stop them growing.

Nala

Hi,
Apparently a good indicator is when you can hear their nails "click" when they are walking on tiles. I found a couple of links that also show how to cut them yourself- as you say it will save a fortune at the vets'!

http://www.bestfriendspetcare.com/bf_grooming_10.cfm

http://www.dfordog.com/didyouknow_cut_nails.htm

Whispered

Yeah I heard the click thing too, the only thing is though, I think if you hit a vein it can be very hard to stop bleeding so it might not be easy to do safely if your dog has a "squirmey" type personality.

Perhaps a manicure set, with a bone shaped file a perfect doggy christmas pressie.

Nala

If your dogs don't know it already, try teaching them to give a paw or "shake hands". This will get them used to having their paws held so they won't squirm so much when you are trimming their nails. Plus they will associate having their paw held with praise.

peasant

They are definetly too long, when the dog can't stand on the front of it's pads any more but has to transfer the weight to the "heel" of the paw.

Clicking on tiles is a sign, but claws that don't click are very short.

When your dogs spend most their life on soft ground (like ours do too) they actually need a bit of a claw to prevent them from slipping all the time, it just shouldn't get too long.

When you look at your fingernails, most of the nail is pink and only the tip is white. It's the same with dogs' claws. Only the white bit should be cut off, because cutting into the pink hurts (a lot) and your dog will have a hard time ever letting you cut a claw again.

Problem is, a lot of dogs have black claws an you can't really see the pink.
Get advice from your vet in this case before you start hacking away.

(all of ours thankfully only have a few black ones each and you can use the neighbouring white ones to guage how much you can cut)

Another issue is, that if you don't cut the claws often enough, the pink bit will get longer and longer until you reach the point where you can't cut the claw to the correct length without hurting the dog.
This then has to be done under anestaesia by the vet.

In order to prevent things from getting this far, you want to clip claws regularly and only a few mm at the time.

A good rule of thumb (for men, anyway:D) ...whenever you have to clip your own nails (be that finger or toe), its about time to do your dogs' as well.

the best tool in my opinion is a guillotine style claw snipper similar to this:


You feed every claw through the hole in the front and you can see exactly where the cutter is going to cut, so the risk of cutting too deep is small.

Every good petshop has these.

MsFifers

http://www.wikihow.com/Clip-Dog-Nails

houndsoflove

All dog grooming Parlours offer a nail clipping service. So i would recommend bringing him to your local dog grooming parlour, and you can wait with the dog while he has his nails cut. The vet will charge too much.

Nicola.