Nail Trimming Trauma
Don’t get me wrong. I love my dog. I do! Look at her, she’s a cutie!
That being said, there are some days where I get quite frustrated with Anya-bear. Those days usually happen any time I’m involved in getting her nails trimmed. Such as today. Suffice to say, Anya does not like getting her nails trimmed. At all. While it never occurs to her to try and attack you to prevent you from trimming her nails, she will do everything in her power to run away from you. This involves climbing up your shoulder, thrashing around in her harness, yelping like you were an axe murderer, and never sitting still long enough for you to grab a paw and trim a nail. And, if you’re not careful about your choice of attire, she can leave some pretty nice scratches on you as she tries to climb over you.
Lately, I’d been taking her to a vet to get her nails trimmed, and occasionally giving her a sedative beforehand to calm her down. It works well. The techs take her back, trim her nails, and I wait patiently in the front, not getting scratched and covered with Anya hair. (Being allergic to her, I prefer not getting scratched and covered in Anya hair. My generic claritin works in general, but it can’t stand up to that.) Taking her to the vet costs a bit more, and they said she’d been getting better about it, so today I tried to take her to one of the walk-in grooming places. Bad idea. The poor lady managed to get a few nails done before asking me to come back and help hold her/calm her down. So, of course, she climbs all over me (and I’m wearing my brand new Glee Club sweatshirt), covering me with hair, and manages to scratch up my wrist pretty well. Even with me holding her it doesn’t go well, so they get another lady to help. They eventually get all her nails clipped, but since Anya struggled so much they inevitably got the quick on one of them. As I take her out of the arms of the groomer, the nail opens up again and gets blood all over the floor of the place and on my new sweatshirt. ::sigh::
It’s a great morning. Time to go switch over laundry.
what a gorgeous dog!
Thanks! I love her dearly (and my new sweatshirt is clean, now).
When I first read this entry, I was trying to remember how a friend of mine cut her show dogs’ nails. I could not think of the name of the tool she used.
But then this morning I was watching Animal Planet and I saw this.
http://www.peticure.com/
a little pricey for a tool to cut a dog’s nails, but I figure you spend more than that taking the dog somewhere to have it done.
I am thinking of ordering one for our dogs and I thought I would share the idea with you.
Have a great weekend!
Veronica
Thanks for sharing Veronica - you can also do that with a dremel. Sadly, we’ve tried that too.
We managed to get her used to the noise of the dremel, but still, once she understands we’re going to do anything to her paws, she freaks out. Probably worth trying again, though!
Ah dremel, that’s the name of the tool I was trying to tell you about, but for the life of me I could not remember what it was called. I wonder how loud the peticure tool is and if my dogs would freak over that too. Not like it is hundreds of dollars, but I’m not sure I want to buy a $30 tool for cutting their nails (not to mention the cost of files etc to use the tool.)
My dogs are big babies when it comes to getting their nails done.