At Heritage Hounds, all dogs that come in for a Full Groom have their nail cut when needed.
However, if your dogs claws are overgrown nails can not immediately be cut short. To achieve the tidy, tiny nubby nails it will take months of regular trimming.
Getting to know your dogs nails
The QUICK within the nail (the blood supply within a claw) will also grow as the nail grows.
In order to reduce the quick, without causing a lot of bleeding, the nails will need to be cut back gradually and often over time to recede the quick.
To shorten overgrown nails, the nail ideally needs to be trimmed every 1-2 weeks until the quick has started to shorten and can then be maintained.
Nail cutting within the grooming session
Usually, depending on the breed of dog, will be on a grooming schedule of 4-8 weeks, this is usually enough to maintain a claw length.
Some dogs will naturally wear nails down themselves whilst out walking (road and pavement walking is great for helping natural wear of the nails)
Nail trimming can either be done at home, by your groomer or a visit to your vet.
Nail trimming is such an important part of your dogs regular grooming, overgrown nails can cause discomfort to the dog and in server case can case alignment issues in the digits and joints which will effect the overall posture of the dog. In the picture to the right, you can see how the length of the dogs claws are being pushed at an awkward angles when standing before trimming.
Alternatives to cutting your dogs claws.
Some dogs, no matter how hard you try, do not like having their claws cut! Do not worry if your dog is one of these as there are alternatives to the traditional claw trimmers.
The use of battery nail files/grinders can be a great way to slow reduce your dogs claws. This is however a lot slower the the traditional quick trimmers and will often take time for your dog to accept and adjust to the vibrations of the grinder.
A natural alternative is to increase the amount of road/pavement walking your dog does. This is a great way to natural wear down those overgrown claws.
Make sure to check those nails regularly and if you are in any doubt speak to your groomer.