How to Dremel Dog Nails

Nail clipping can be a traumatic experience for many dogs; dremeling is a recent alternative to nail clipping that is easier and safer for the average do-it-yourselfer.

Doberdawn has posted an excellent article on how to correctly dremel and shape a dog’s nail (her article can be found by googling “doberdawn”) But in introducing my sensitive rescue dog to the dremel tool I found that much, much more groundwork was required to train her to allow me to dremel her nails.

If you have a dog traumatized by nail clipping or who is terrified of the dremel tool this tutorial is for you. Work these steps twice a day, before every meal.

1. Scoop your dog’s food into her bowl and hold it in your lap. Turn on the dremel and hold it in your hands, turned on, until she gets up the courage to come eat anyway. (watch that they don't touch the sander with their nose!) After they got over the sound sensitivity move on.
   
2. Sit with the food bowl and make your dog lift her paw, gently and quickly touch the TURNED OFF tool to the nail. AS soon as you get the slightest contact praise and release the bowl of food. After you can touch the nail and hold the dremel there for 3 seconds move on.
   
3. Repeat the above step with the tool turned on low. Take it slow and be careful with long hair- getting the hair caught now can take weeks to overcome.
   
4. Turn tool on high and begin again, begin shaping the nails a tiny bit at a time.
   
5. Begin desensitizing the dog to having the back nails dremeled, taking it as slow as you need to and each time withholding food until the dog permits you to advance a tiny bit.
   
6. Keep working this program EVERY DAY, as your dogs gets more and more used to this activity as a daily exercise to earn her food, she will totally submit. Work with her to the point where, you can do multiple nails and, eventually, multiple paws in one sitting.
   
7. Doing one paw at each meal, twice a day, takes less than 6 or 7 minutes total and results in having each nail done every other day. By dremeling a tiny bit of each nail every other day you can force the quicks to recede back and keep your dog relaxed about having her nails dremeled.

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