How to Cut a Dog's Nails without Tears, Bloodshed, and Panic Attacks

Weekend Update:

Despite both John and I being sick and spending the vast majority of the weekend in bed watching Youtube videos and sleeping, we had a good weekend.

John was able to complete his 3 papers, poster project, and take-home quiz and have them all ready to turn in today.  I was able to do a few loads of laundry and pick up the house a bit.  We also cut Honey's toenails and watched the season premiere of Revenge.  (If you haven't watched that show yet ... go watch it now!  The entire first season is on Netflix.)

How to Cut Dog Toenails

Honey is not a small dog.  She weighs about 55 pounds, and is all muscle.  She does not like having her toenails trimmed, and is strong enough to really hurt us (well, me anyway) trying to get away from the evil nail clipper.  When she was still a puppy (about 9 months old), and I tried to hold her while we cut her nails, she gave me bruises that lasted for 2 weeks all over my body.⁽¹⁾   After only finishing one and a half paws, she went into a full-blown panic attack, and we had to stop.  I held her quietly for over an hour before she began to relax.  It was not good.

Obviously, we couldn't continue like that.  We tried taking her to Petsmart to get her nails trimmed, and that kinda worked for a few months.  While it wasn't extremely expensive, it was still an (unnecessary) expense, and neither John nor I were happy with how they cut her nails - sometimes we couldn't even tell they had been cut.  So, I came up with a plan.

Plan:  Prove to Honey that there is nothing scary about getting her nails cut.

I am just pretending to guard the house until you leave and I can take another nap.

Tools:

Nail File (Link is to a file similar to what we own and use)
Dog Blanket
Benedryl  (Link includes information on effects benedryl has on dogs)
Bowl
Milk

Process:

To do this, I started giving Honey about half of a benedryl every morning and evening for several days.⁽²⁾  After 3-4 days, she became very dopey and sleepy all the time.  We then took her for a long walk to further tire her out.  By the time we returned to the house, all she wanted to do was sleep.

Next, John sat and made himself comfortable in a chair, and then we put Honey belly-up in his lap.  We stretched the blanket over her belly, and tucked the ends beneath John's legs, effectively trapping her in his arms.  He held her firmly while I started trimming her nails with the nail file.

She fought for about 3 nails, and then just gave up.  She didn't have the energy or the strength to keep fighting us, and so she submitted and let us do with her as we wanted.  I was extremely careful not to cut her nails back too far (the last thing we wanted was for this to be painful for her), and we kept a close eye on her to make sure she didn't panic.

She didn't - in fact she almost fell asleep.

When I finished trimming all four paws, we did not immediately release her.  Instead, John held her while I went to the kitchen, got her blue puppy bowl, poured about half a cup of milk into it, and returned.  While she was still being held, I let her drink about half of the bowl of milk.  Then John released her, and I moved the bowl to the floor.  She happily finished the bowl of milk, came over to us to be petted, and then went to take a nap.

No fighting, no panicking, no bruising.  And the actual process took less than 15 minutes.⁽³⁾

Since then, we've been reducing the amount of benedryl given to her beforehand.  She still needs a little bit to calm her nerves, but a single benedryl the day of works fine. Hopefully as she gets older we can take her off the benedryl completely.

We only use her blue puppy bowl for milk, and she only gets milk after her toenails are cut.  Now she gets excited when her blue bowl comes out, because she knows that even though her nails are getting trimmed, she's getting milk before it's all over.  She only fights now when she's uncomfortable (for instance last month she decided that she didn't like to be held belly-up.  Once we figured that out, she stopped fighting), and it's never bad enough to give us bruises.

A few notes:

1.  In all the times that Honey fought with us and struggled against us during this process, she never once tried to bite us.  She would scratch (not on purpose, but because she had long nails!) and throw her weight around and merely do her best to escape.  Trying to restrain her at those points became difficult and dangerous for everyone involved: John, Me, and Honey.

2.  I'm not advocating drugging animals, except for extreme situations and under the approval of a veterinarian.  The dosage and use of benedryl were all approved by our family veterinarian, and the purpose was to prevent further harm to both John and I as well as Honey.  The point is we are working with Honey to make her comfortable with this process, and as she becomes more accustomed to it we will be weaning her off the benedryl.

3.  John's parents used this technique (sans benedryl) when they got their new puppy, a purebred bassett hound.  Without the traumatic experiences that we had with Honey, the immediate reward after cutting nails worked like a charm from the beginning.  Due to a sensitive stomach, the bassett cannot have milk, but can have cheese.  So, my Mom in Law feeds the bassett cheese after every paw, and everyone is happy and relaxed through the whole process.  The trick is tying the nail cutting experience to something happy - like a rare treat.