First, gently hold your dog's paw in your hand. While looking down at your dog's semi-transparent nails, locate the pink region in the center of each nail. This pink area showing through the outside of the nail is the quick. It's that simple!
It's best to not cut within 2 millimeters of the quick. As you cut the nail deeper, a gray to pink oval starts to appear at the top of the cut surface of the nail.
Step three: Locate the quick
Before you take the clippers or grinder to an overgrown nail, look at the nail in the light to identify the quick. On dogs with light-colored nails, the quick will appear as a darker, pinkish section within the nail.
Taking your dog for regular walks, including on hard surfaces such as pavements, will help to shorten their claws, but may not be enough to keep them as short as they should be.
Ask for a sedated nail trim.
Unless there is a medical reason not to sedate your dog, your vet should be able to do a sedated trim. Being sedated should make the nail trim process less traumatic for your pup.
In most cases, after a dog's nails are trimmed the quick will start to recede after about 7 days. Depending on how long your dog's nails and quicks are, it might take a few months before you can get their nail to the desired length.
Clipping and grinding are equally efficient and safe ways to trim your pup's nails. Clippers are cheaper and less noisy, while dremels are louder and more expensive but more precise and efficient.
Dogs need their nails clipped on a regular basis, approximately every 3-4 weeks; however, it is common for owners to wait too long in between trimmings which can lead to a number of health issues for the animal.
If a dog nail quick is exposed, clean and wrap it to prevent infection. If the bleeding does not stop, visit your vet immediately.
Ideally you should not hear your dog's nails clicking on the floor. You don't need to get the nails very short because your dog still needs to dig into the earth when running outside. The nails should be short enough to avoid touching the floor when standing.
The center of the nail will look darker when you get close to the quick, so when the middle of the nail starts to look dark (versus white), you can stop trimming. This is called the pulp, and it looks like a black spot in the middle of your dog's nail.
You should only trim off the tip, but if you accidentally cut your dog's nails too short, they may yip in pain and start bleeding. Although this is usually not life-threatening, you still don't want your pup to be in pain.
When you fail to trim your dog's nails on a regular basis, the quick grows with the nail. In some cases, when the nails are extra long, the quick may lengthen so much that it reaches the tip of the nail. When this happens, you won't be able to trim much of the nail without risking cutting through the quick.
Adult dogs may be fearful of the clippers and the sound they make, especially if they had a previous bad experience (having the nail trimmed too short or “quicked”). Desensitizing older dogs to nail trimming takes patience. The process cannot be rushed.
For maintenance, cut every two weeks. To shorten, cut every week. Once the insensitive nail is thinned out and isn't supporting the quick, the quick will dry up and recede. This will allow you to cut your dog's nails even shorter.
Here's the trick to make the quick recede - after trimming the nail, use the dremel to file off the shiny outer surface of the nail 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch back from the tip. This will cause the end of the nail to dry out much more quickly and the quick will recede faster, too.
For overgrown dog nails, you'll need to clip long nails weekly. This gives the quick time to recede toward the paw. Once your dog's nails are finally at an acceptable length, keep trimming back his nails on a weekly basis. If you skip a week or two, your dog's nails will start touching the ground.
The hack involves wrapping cling film around the top of your forehead, before smearing a generous amount of peanut butter onto it for your dog to lick. The video shows the woman effortlessly clipping her dog's nails as it remained distracted and licked the peanut butter off the women's forehead.
No one should physically force a dog to have its nails trimmed, even if it is muzzled. If it is aggressively trying to stop the process from occurring by growling, snarling, or trying to bite then an injectable sedative should be administered or the nail trim should be stopped.