Tips on Clipping your pet’s nail

Clipping your pet’s nails is considered one of the easiest tasks in grooming your pet yet there are people who don't know the proper way of clipping their pet's nails. When you let your pet’s nails untrimmed this can lead to broken nails that can cause bleeding, pain and discomfort to your pet. Long nails can snag on clothing, carpets, furniture and may even result to ingrown. Nails that are left untrimmed will keep on growing until it grows back into the pad of your pet’s paw and will result in ingrown and can be hard to remove especially to pets like cats. Like us, ingrown nails to pets can be really painful. This is why you should regularly trim your pet’s nails every week or two.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind in clipping your pet’s nails.

Preparations

It is important to have the right equipments before you clip your pet’s nails. Having a good pair of clippers or trimmers exclusively designed for pets is a good investment. You will find a lot of clippers that are especially designed for specific type of animal in the market today. You can ask your veterinarian to give you an idea of brand or type of clippers that is suitable for your pet.

When it’s time to clip your pet’s nails make sure that he is calm, safe and comfortable. Pet’s especially dogs can be jumpy and can easily pick up emotions like when you are nervous. For first timer pets, make them get used to you holding their paw and slowly trim their nails. You don’t have to finish their nails all at once. When your pet gets excited stop or take a break. In time, your dog will be used to trimming.

Nail Clipping

Clipping your pet’s nail is easy. All you have to do is to lift and hold your pet’s paw and clip it below the blood vessel . Be careful not to clip the blood vessel which runs down the middle of the nail. You can easily spot the blood vessel especially with pets with light-colored or clear nails compare to pets with darker nails. You should hold a small flashlight so you can spot the it and ask someone to hold your pet still while clipping their nails to avoid any kind of accidents. If you cut the the blood vessel your pet will flinch and the nail will bleed. If this accident happens you don’t have to panic. Just apply a styptic to the cut.

If you can’t figure out where the quick is and afraid of hurting your pet, you might want to hire a professional pet groomer to do the job. You can also find a lot of pet products online to help you with this task.