Puppy nails - what to do?

[BunnyLebowski]

Our pup is 5 months old and her claws seem to be very long. She clatters along the floor when she runs and skids and falls over. She has also accidentally dealt out some vicious scratches to us humans.

We took her to a groomer at the weekend who said they couldn't be trimmed and gave us a nail file.

Is filing the only thing to be done and if so does anyone have any tips? She's a black/grey dog so it's hard to see her nails and where the quick is.

TIA.

Does she walk on hard surfaces when you take her for walks? I have always found a mixture of pavement/hard path areas and grass mud keeps our dogs nails short.

Yes Golden. Her walks are about 40% grass 60% pavement.

It's just so noticeable and noisy - like she's wearing tap shoes .

Most of our dogs have been black, mainly std poodles and nails are pretty huge on them. Best advice is the walking on pavements but poodles are light on their feet and don't wear them down much. As a retired groomer I can understand your groomer not cutting them if black as it is so hard to see where to cut, and they may not have actually needed cut.

Get yourself a good quality pair of gullotine nail clippers (these are dog ones) why I say good is so that they are very sharp as cheap ones will crush the nail rather than cut. On a very regular basis, once a week or more take the very tip off, will be no more than a mm. What you are doing is training the nails back, cut too much they'll bleed and hurt!

A file will work too but I find dogs don't like the vibration, it slow work, they get bored and this puts them off nail trimming. Horrible taste to breathe in too!

If you have wooden floors nails will always make a sound, even short ones. You can get a product called paw wax, it prevents slipping and it may be useful until pup is more co-ordinated as slippy floors can lead to joint damage.

Thank you Red that's a really helpful post

You will get used to trimming the nails and a better sense of when to stop.

Our dog has black nails so we can't see the quick, took him to the nurse at the vets and she found it difficult and ended up not charging us as she only did a tiny trim,after that we took the plunge and purchased our own guillotine clippers. The first few times I was very tentative but now I know how far to trim back.

If you do decide to trim then it is worth getting some antiseptic blood stopper just in case you do manage to get the quick.

Advice from Red is bang on. My elder Lurcher has black claws and they grew too long while we were going through a great deal of stress and were only walking him at the park right by our house.

We started trimming - just the very tip - using guillotine clippers, twice a week and found we were eventually able to trim them shorter then they'd ever been before. Regular trimming, even just tiny amounts, causes the quick to shrink back, meaning you can then keep them shorter.

As groovejet said, have some styptic powder on hand just in case.