How To Teach Dogs To Trim Their Own Back Nails

June 30, 2017 by Fanna Easter

Trimming a Dog’s Back Nails

Dog Nail Trimming Tips — Mikkel Bigandt/Adobe Stock

Trimming a dog’s nails can be difficult, especially if your dog hates nail trims. Holding your dog down to trim his nails only makes him hate dog nail trimming even more, and eventually he’ll learn to bite. There’s an easier way to keep your dog’s nails trimmed, and you don’t even have to touch your dog’s nails!

Trimming Back Nails

Instead of trimming a dog’s nails, teach him to grind back his own nails. You’ll need pea-sized treats, a concrete surface and your dog. Sit outside, preferably on the ground, and toss treats along your driveway.

Now, there’s an art to tossing treats for maximum back nail grinding. Instead of throwing treats up high, toss them along the concrete surface—almost like skipping a rock across a lake. Listen carefully as your dog scampers across the rough surface; you should hear his nails scraping along the concrete. If not, grab really good treats (e.g. cheese chunks) and toss about 3-4 feet away from you. Once your dog learns to run after a treat, slowly increase the distance.

Keep sessions short, about 3-4 minutes, but practice every other day to shorten nails quicker. Running and chasing treats for a long distance can cause paw damage because your dog is using his paw pads to stop himself, so keep the total distance traveled under 6 feet.

Watch your dog’s paw pads during this process to ensure he’s not rubbing his paw pads raw, and only play this game on cool concrete.

WATCH: How to Teach a Dog To Trim His Own Back Toenails

Trimming Front Nails

For front nails, teach your dog to scratch his nails against a sandpaper-covered board. Dogs get really good at this behavior so much so they can scratch their nails bloody. For details and a video demonstrating this behavior, check out this article on DIY dog nails.

Keep dog training sessions short, about 2-3 minutes per day, and practice every other day. Once your dog’s front nails are shorter, it will take a day for the quick to recede back a bit, so your dog won’t bleed.

WATCH: Trimming Dog Nails With a Scratchboard

https://youtu.be/XXx8HTT2has

Put down those nail trimmers, and teach your dog to trim his own nails instead!

Dog Nail Trimming Tips: Teach Dog to Use Scratchboard

April 24, 2015 by Fanna Easter

How to Teach Your Dog to Use a Scratchboard

You’ve built a size-appropriate nail scratchboard and now it’s time to teach your dog how to drag her front nails across it. You’ll need a clicker, lots of yummy treats (about the size of a pea), scratchboard and a room with a door.

Room With a Door

During the beginning stages, choose a small room with a door for dog training sessions. Before starting a dog training session, click and treat your dog for walking into the room and close the door behind you. By closing the door, you’re keeping your dog with you while minimizing distractions (e.g. movement around the house). Usually, I use our bathroom so my dogs associate it with fun instead of bath time. 🙂

This is not the torture room. This closed room means choice and fun, as your dog can decide to not participate. Remember, choice is a powerful reinforcer–sometimes even more so than food!

Placement of Scratchboard

After a few trials and errors, I discovered maximum nail filing when placing the scratchboard at a 45-degree angle to the ground. At this angle, your dog files the bottom portion first and then the middle and top of nail, forming a nice rounded and smooth nail. When keeping the scratchboard flat on the ground, I noticed a blunter bottom portion instead of a rounded nail tip, which seemed to grow out faster.

First Training Sessions

Goal: Positively introduce your dog to scratchboard.

Gather needed supplies, bring your dog into your chosen room, close the door and have a seat on the floor. Place treats on the seat of a chair before beginning each session. Basically, treats are kept up high so you can easily reach while keeping your dog from self snacking. Next to your treats, place the scratchboard. Placing the board on the floor means “let’s scratch at the board” to your dog. Plus you don’t want to miss any nail drags.

Place bottom of board on floor and leave top against your leg. The front should be facing your dog.
When your dog looks at, walks toward or touches her front paw on the board, click and toss her a treat.
Usually, looking at and walking toward the board happens during your first training session. Your dog is learning that the board means something so she’s going to investigate, which you will heavily reward.
Practice 5-10 times and end training session.

Paw on Board

Goal: Teach dog to touch paw to board.

Settle in chosen room, and set up treats and scratchboard.
Place board on ground with top portion leaning against your legs. Get ready. When the board is in place, this gives your dog the green light to start offering paw movements.
Click and treat paw touches (either paw or both) even if for a nanosecond.
After 5-10 treats, end training session.

If Dog Walks Away During Training Session

This can happen. Think of it as a temperature check of your training session. If your dog walks away, there are a few things going on:

Your dog is confused. She’s not sure what you’re asking her. Take a step back and click/treat for looking, walking toward and touching the scratchboard. Your dog should think: “When I touch this board with my paw, I hear a click and get a treat.”
Your treats are boring. Hey, your dog chooses what she works for just like us. So find treats your dog loves and use in next training session.
Too many distractions: Turn down the TV, close blinds or play soft music to drown out loud sounds.
Up your rate of reinforcement: Ideally, you should be clicking and treating every 5-10 seconds. I know your dog is offering behaviors in that short time. If you’re not noticing these behaviors, you’ll be shocked at what you missed. 🙂

VIDEO: Teaching Dog to Use Nail Scratchboard

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Building a Dog Nail Scratchboard

April 23, 2015 by Fanna Easter

Teaching Your Dog to Trim Her Nails With a Scratchboard

After finishing an entire tutorial on trimming your dog’s nails with clippers, I want to be upfront and honest. I’ve taught my dogs to trim their own front paw nails. In my opinion, it’s much easier and so much more fun for your dogs!

In the beginning, your dog will drag one front paw at a time across the scratchboard. Our goal is scratching two front paws (digging style) across the scratchboard, making dog nail trims quick and fun. Keep that in mind when building a scratchboard for your dog.

But what about filing down back nails? You can certainly follow these guidelines for teaching back paw scratches. I noticed dogs wear their back nails down naturally through daily activities, such as walking on concrete or running in the yard.

How to Build a Dog Nail Scratchboard

It’s pretty simple to build your own scratchboard. All you need is sandpaper, wood and staples. After building a few and trying them out with different sized dogs, it’s best to build a scratchboard based on your dog’s paw size.

Sandpaper

Introduce self nail filing using 80 grit sandpaper. This softer grit is more comfortable during the learning stage and less likely to scratch paw pads. Once your dog learns to drag only her nails across the scratchboard, lower the grit size slowly. Remember, higher grit numbers mean softer (less abrasive) grit, which will slowly file back your dog’s nails. Most dogs are comfortable dragging their nails across 30-40 grit sandpaper, which files down nails fast.

Dogs under 10 lbs: 80 grit.
Dogs between 10-25 lbs: Start with 80 grit and slowly introduce 40 grit (medium grit).
Dogs over 25 lbs: Start with 80 grit and slowly introduce to 30 grit (coarse grit).

If your dog is uncomfortable using a lower number (coarser) grit sandpaper, move up size. Now, coarser grit sandpaper won’t cause your dog’s nails to bleed. It’s dragging her nails across the scratchboard too many times that causes bleeding.

Wood Backing and Staples

Trim a 2×4 into two foot pieces and staple sandpaper around front, back and sides. Make sure staples are flush with the board. You don’t want your dog’s nails to get caught in a staple. When lowering grit, I just staple it over the previous grit. For larger nail scratchboards, wrap and staple entire surface with sandpaper.

For dogs under 30 lbs, I recommend stapling sandpaper around a two-foot long 2×4. Wrap around front and side, and staple behind (unused portion).
For large dogs, screw two pieces of 2×4 side by side (creating a wide area for the dog to scratch).
Giant breeds: screw three pieces of 2×4 side by side.

VIDEO: How to Build a Dog Nail Scratchboard

VIDEO: How to Build a Large Dog Scratchboard

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Trimming Dog Nails: Let’s Get Busy Scratching

April 21, 2015 by Fanna Easter

How to Teach Your Dog to File Her Nails

Once your dog will drag her nails along the scratch board, it’s time to ask for multiple scratches before clicking and treating. Grab a clicker and treats, and let’s get started.

Two Nail Drags

Goal: Two nail drags in a row.

Place nail scratch board in place.
Wait for two nails drags before clicking.
- About 50 percent of dogs will drag once, stop and look at you (or the clicker), waiting for the click sound. If they don’t hear the click sound, they’ll usually drag their nails again. Click and treat. The other 50 percent will remove their paws from the board, think for a moment, then offer two quick nail drags. Click and treat!
- Tip: Wait for second nail drag. If your dog becomes frustrated and leaves, then she is confused. Go back to single nail drags for a couple of training sessions and slowly wait for two nail drags.
Practice five times. Pick up board and end training session.

RELATED: Dog Nail Trimming Tools

Three Nail Drags

Goal: Three nail drags in a row

Follow the instructions for two nail drags.
If your dog gets stuck and you’re seeing results, there is nothing wrong with two nail drags for one treat. 🙂

Other Paw

Goal: Other paw (non-dominant paw) scratches board.

By now, your dog is probably switching paws in between nail drags. If not, move the scratch board directly in front of the non-scratch front paw. This usually gets it moving. When she offers her non-scratch paw, click and give her two treats. Trust me, she will notice and start offering it again!

Both Paws

Goal: Both paws scratch one after the other (digging motion).

Depending on your dog’s personality, this may have happened already. Stella (my Bull Terrier) offered this behavior in the beginning so I clicked and treated. Some dogs need to experiment and practice more, and some dogs may never offer this behavior. Remember, the goal is filing down nails. 🙂