I never would have thought that I'd have to RE-train a dog to tolerate the dremel, but alas, that is what I decided was best this morning..
I'm not very nice today - I did dog toes.... Mean mean dog mom on Christmas eve, right??
Well, I decided that I was going to loop Chance up and get him done first, since he's the biggest (literally) pain in the butt. While coaxing him with jerky treats (the dogs all time favorite junk food ever), little miss P puppy came up to snarf food (she's a chow hound if ever there was one). I decided to take that opportunity to do HER nails (she's pretty easy) and have Chance "observe" her good behavior... I'd treat her, AND him as she did a good job (which like I said, she's pretty easy).
Chance isn't a fan of being on his back unless HE chooses to do it, so rather than stress him out, I let him lay on his side between my legs. I turned on the dremel and let it run and gave him cookies and told him what a good (pain in the butt) dog he was....
Ordinarily one toe in and I'm having to restrain him... literally. One leg over the front half of the (huge) dog, the other leg over the other half of the (huge) dog. I decided to take another approach. Barely touching the toe nails, speaking calmly, praising and treating.... he was shaking like a leaf but not struggling with me like normal. He's always been better about his rear toes than his front, so I ended with his rear toes. I didn't get them done as well as I would have ordinarily, but I didn't have to restrain him, and he didn't stress as much about it today. Granted yes, he was still shaking and had that stinky odor he puts out when he stresses, but his pads were not soaking wet nor did I have to restrain him once.
We'll keep doing it this way until I get his behavior under control. Restraining a stressed out 40 pound STRONG Cardigan boy is NOT my idea of fun, so I'll do what I can to make it a better experience for us both... that is one of my resolutions for 2010... :)
Wish us luck! :)
