Yippee! Happy dance time!!! My 11 month old Great Dane, Lily, has always been very sensitive to body handling and this made things particularly challenging when it came to toe nail clipping. I was able to desensitize my other dogs to using the dremmel tool which I love since is is next to impossible to clip the quick this way, but she did not even like her paw held let alone the sound of a dremmel and would fight me every step. Gord and I were having some success by waiting until the evening when she was relaxed in bed lying down beside him and he would rub her belly while I did one nail a night. This was our method until I accidentally clipped her quick on one of her nails quite badly and ever since then, there was absolutely no way I could get near her feet. I decided to try by myself and desensitize her slowly to just the approach of my hand and reward her with a little piece of chicken if she did not move her paw away. We started seeing success. Slowly she allowed me to place my hand on her paw and she would get rewarded with a piece of chicken. Then it was pick up and hold her paw in my hand for a second and reward with chicken. Then I started presenting the clippers and rewarding with chicken, approaching her paw with clippers and rewarding when she did not pull away and then we worked our way up to me picking up her paw and touching it with the clippers for a second and rewarding when she allowed it. Next it was place the clipper around her nail and reward when she allowed. Last week I was able to clip 3 nails all by myself with her and no big struggle. Today is cause for celebration...I clipped all her toe nails with no help and no struggle. Desensitizing process beginning to end...less than 2 weeks. Way to go Lily!!!! :)
Posted on: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 19:33:24 +0000
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