How To Teach Your Dog to Get Their Nails Cut
Luna had her nails cut at the vet before I started working with her and her experience was terrifying. She was restrained by strangers, in a strange place, and had a confusing/invasive procedure done to her.
Despite vets labeling themselves as “fear free” their protocols for cutting dogs nails is far from it, resulting in more fear/aggression around nail cutting than necessary. This leads to more restraint, muzzles, sedatives, and eventually anesthesia in order to cut some dogs' nails. Vets also seem to have a high rate of cutting the nerve in the dog’s nails which is extremely painful and traumatizing. (I don’t remember the last time I cut a nerve and I cut multiple dogs' nails each week) I think this is because most dogs are fighting them during the nail cut which makes it hard to get an accurate cut.
Handling for a nail cut is a skill that should be taught in a fair and rewarding way from the start. This is not an extensive process. Over the past two weeks I spent a max of 5 minutes 3 times a week practicing handling for nail cuts with Luna.
I started off teaching her that if she is still, even just for a moment I will release her paw and she will get to play a food chasing game. This is the first time I did this exercise with her. She was not happy and fought me when I held her paw. She immediately assumed something bad was going to happen because of her experience at the vet. But she quickly learned nothing bad was happening and we actually got to play a fun game together.
I also practiced touching her paws when we played tug. This helped further build a positive association with having her paws touched.
In tandem with the previous exercises I also showed her the nail cutter is actually a really fun item that is primarily associated with playing.
Once she learned that having her paw held for several seconds wasn’t scary and it = a food chasing game, I moved onto flicking her nails before releasing her to a game to mimic the feeling of the nail cutter.
Then I moved on to tapping the nail cutter on her nails and then releasing her to a food chasing game. At this point she had no fear of the nail cutter and instead saw it as something that signaled we were playing a game.
Once I actually cut her nail in this sequence there was no confusion, restraint, or fear. Her focus is on holding still in anticipation of the food chasing game. She interprets this as a game we do together, not a terrifying procedure done by strangers.