Danny
Posted : 3/24/2006 12:45:37 AM
Hello there
These are excellent suggestions you received so far: distracting them with food and handling their feet not only when you want to cut them.
Furthermore, once the dog lets you touch his feet without problems, you could start 'cutting' them as often as you can, ideally every day. Of course, you do not really cut anything on most days, but the dog gets used to laying there, you handling his feet, and nothing happening or hurting (the scene has to be the same btw, if you plan to cut or not; that means that you have the clippers around, the peanut butter there, and so forth - otherwise the dog will quickly learn to tell the difference). There is a good chance that you or someone else once cut into the quick when trimming, from where his overblown fear to the procedure might stem. Disproving this pain-prediction of his by most of the time not even cutting and just going through the motions of cutting, and being extremely careful to just take off very little when you do cut, should slowly desensitize him, particularly when done in conjunction with above mentioned techniques of distration and habituation. A last resort is not to cut at all, but using a nail file instead (at least for a while), as most dogs accept that much more readily (it takes more time to do however).
Good luck [
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