Dremeling Your Dogs Nails

von KumasonCo . April 03, 2016

Dremeling your dogs nails does not have to be a stressful experience for you or your dog. In fact, it can actually be a fun, rewarding and often very funny time together. My dog Kumason is a 3 year old male American Akita who looks forward to his dog manicures. When he sees me take out my dremel box, he runs over to the couch and gets into his ready position with his front paws hanging down off the couch; it's really quite hysterical. However, it didn't always start out this way.

The main component is to establish a bond with your new puppy to gain his trust and then to slowly introduce the dremel in graduated steps. A cordless dremel works best as to avoid getting the wire tangled. Here are the steps I used but remember, I spent a lot of time with each step before I moved on to the next: placing dremel in off position on floor so that puppy can see and sniff it, placing dremel close to your puppy in off position, turning dremel on low speed while holding it and walking around, sometimes sticking it in my pocket while doing my household chores, gradually increasing the speed while holding it, touching puppy with dremel on lowest setting for vibration sensation.

When I attempted to dremel his nails for the very first time, I had to put a collar and short leash on him and had to have a friend try and hold him still which was virtually impossible. As soon as I got near his foot, he was scared and jumped up on my friends lap trying every maneuver he could to get away from me and the big bad dremel. While I wasn't getting anywhere with this scenario, I had to come up with a better game plan.

I bought a meaty type bone at the local pet store and thought that I might have a better chance at it if he were preoccupied. It worked! I was only able to dremel one or two nails at first. However, I really didn't like using the meaty bone as it was messy, greasy and I was afraid of splintering. I eventually found a rubber toy with receptacles inside and filled them with peanut butter. He loved it.

Currently I just dremel as needed and we are not on any particular schedule.

I hope that you found this article helpful. Just remember, with trust, patience, perseverance and creativity, you too will become a master dremeler in no time!