How to Trim Your Dog's Nails

One of the biggest joys I have in my life besides my wife and kids are my dogs! I love them! I was raised with dogs and have had them in my life from my first memory. In fact, Wiggles, is on my lap right now as I write this piece.

If you come to my home you'll find 7 of our other kids! All of them small but one and all of them like one of our kids. We have Wiggles, Tuna Fish (I know), Joe Applehead (he's our newest baby, an apple head Chihuahua) Princes P, Buddy Earl and Ling-a Dingers and the mother of them all, not really the "mom" but the head of the pack, our Arctic Timber Wolf, Meshia.

Now with a clan that big you can imagine that the vet bill gets high now and then and we're all right with that because it's a responsibility we chose to accept.

Every time we took them to the vet I always noticed a fee for clipping their nails. I was always grateful to see this because nothing hurts worse than spending a Saturday out in the sun only to come home and have your babies jump on your burnt flesh! But after several visits for checkups it was always the same, that fee for clipping their tiny nails!

I was at work one day when my wife called me and told me she found the coolest thing ever! I was thinking of how long I was going to have to pay for it! When I asked what it was she told me a machine that will grind off the nails of dogs so easier that you'll love and they'll love it to! You know the one I'm talking about! So I kind of got excited and when I got home we read the directions, loaded the batteries and chose Buddy Earl as the first victim. My wife held Buddy Earl and I turned on that little doggie grinder and you would have thought Buddy Earl came face to face with a rabid dog! He started screaming and wiggling so my wife had to put him down! Long story short, they all acted that way! They hated the noise! It's funny they don't mention that on the box!

Several weeks later I called my niece who was in her second year of Vet School. I asked her how to do it without hurting them. This was the reason I didn't do it in the first place. I clipped to close and made them cry and that bothered me. Of course she laughed at her Uncle and told me how to do it and it's so simple it's like learning how a magic trick is done! After, you feel like 11 brain cells just died because it is just so simple!

She told me to go and get a small LED flashlight. The real bright one kind of like pen light and pick up a new pair of dog nail clippers. She told me to have her Aunt hold the doggie and use the pin light behind the nails and look for the "quick". She said you should see it through the nail with the light behind it and she was right! Clip to the quick! You can see it with the flashlight!

When I tried it for the first time I was amazed that it worked! You could really see that little nerve that makes them cry when you clip it!

Now we do it all the time and of the ten million times we've clipped them they've never once cried nor have we clipped the quick. It's so simple and it makes life easier for the dog. Having long nails can hurt them when they walk on pavement but by doing this trick all that's in the past!