A friend of mine recently utilized social media to request tips for trimming their new puppy’s needle-like nails. A couple of the responses indicated that the best course of action would be to forcibly hold the puppy’s paws and grind the nails with a Dremel or nail grinder. The forced submission would teach the puppy that they have no choice, and they would grow up tolerating nail trims without stress.
If I were a better business person, I’d simply ignore those comments because do you know what those comments are for me? They are job security. My job is to help people and their dogs when things go terribly wrong, and this recipe is one that frequently goes terribly wrong.
But I’m a bad business person, and I care more about the welfare of dogs than I do making money, so I’m going to share with you why that’s a very problematic philosophy and how we can do better for our dogs.
I will be the first to admit that sometimes, forcing a puppy to endure repeated nail trims results in exactly what these people suggested. Occasionally, a dog will have such a steady and stable temperament that they will simply habituate to having their choices taken from them, accept it, and learn to tolerate the procedure of nail grinding with minimal stress. However, that is the exception and not the rule and still isn't the kind of relationship I want with my dog.
There are a few other more likely possibilities. One is that the dog develops something called learned helplessness. This is where the dog learns that there is absolutely nothing they can do to fix the situation. There is no behavior that provides reinforcement. They cannot escape. Any effort tends to make the situation worse, so they stop trying. This is not trust. This is not acceptance. This is not feeling okay about a situation. This is more like a person who is suddenly confined to a straight jacket. After fighting it, they learn that struggle is not only futile but it often results in muscle and joint strain, so they stop fighting. But their lack of fight is not indicative that they feel okay about being locked in a straight jacket. It doesn’t eliminate their stress. It also doesn’t mean that they trust the person who forced them into the jacket. In fact, whoever performed that horrible act will be someone that our victim distrusts immensely. Is that really the relationship you wish to have with your dog? Even if they cease struggling while you grind their nails?
Another possibility is that your dog at some point does struggle and succeeds at breaking free even momentarily. This struggling behavior is then reinforced by their temporary escape. And as you continue to escalate your capture and restraint behaviors, the dog continues to escalate their escape behaviors as well. Eventually, they resort to biting. Usually it starts with gentle mouthing, and when that gets ignored, the dog starts biting with pressure. Now, you have a dog who doesn’t trust you and who has learned to bite you when they feel you are putting their safety at risk. You may not feel that you are putting their safety at risk, but that is of no consequence to the dog. You have proven to be a threat, and biting is the thing that keeps them safe. They will soon skip all those escalating steps and go to what works best--biting with pressure. You now have an aggressive dog.
There’s also a third possibility. One of the ways that dogs (and every other species) learn is through association. For example, if a dog learns that putting their bum on the ground when you say “sit” means they get a tasty bit of chicken, the dog tends to learn that putting their bum on the ground is fun, and even hearing the word “sit” gives them happy feelings because it predicts tasty chicken. Similarly, if instead you were to tell your dog to sit and then you smash their backside to the ground, this will make the dog uncomfortable, and they will begin to experience fear when you say “sit.” This also applies to restraint and grinding your dog’s nails. If you force your dog to endure nail trims with restraint and your dog experiences fear, the dog will begin to associate things with that fearful experience. But here’s the clincher: We can’t really predict what they will associate with the scary experience. It might be just the nail grinder. It might be touching your dog’s paws. It might be your very presence. It could be the room in which you perform the violation. It could result in a fear of all people. For some dogs, it could actually lead to generalized anxiety. That is, they become fearful all the time that something bad might happen to them, and this results in not only a decreased quality of life for the dog but also significant behavior problems that can only be addressed through both intensive life-long training and medication. I worked with one dog who had become aggressive toward strangers, handling sensitive even with his own people, and terrified to ride in the car. After some sleuthing, I discovered that it was all related to scary trips to the groomer and to the vet where the dog was forcibly restrained while scary things were done to him.
So basically, forced nail trims are a really bad idea. And they are also completely unnecessary.
I spend a tremendous amount of time training dogs who have already developed a negative conditioned emotional response to nail trims and nail grinding (and have often developed fear and aggression toward people because of this activity alone and/or similar philosophies that have affected their lives) to not only tolerate nail grinding but to actively give consent for it, being an active participant in cooperative care.
What is cooperative care? It is the dog choosing to participate in their own husbandry. That is, they want to have their nails filed, and they will help you do it. I expand this training to all other husbandry behaviors as well, like grooming, veterinary examinations, vaccinations, blood draws, etc.
“But you can’t do that with MY breed!” you say? Nonsense. I first started doing this with an aggressive Cane Corso after studying videos of zoo trainers doing it with lions, hyenas, and even a crocodile. If you can teach a lion who was not bred to work with people and has no innate biddable nature to voluntarily offer a giant paw for a blood draw, how much easier do you think it should be to teach a dog, that has hundreds to thousands of years of genetic selection for human companionship and varying degrees of biddability, to participate in nail grinding? And it’s a whole lot easier if you don’t teach them to be terrified of it first. I’ve now trained this behavior in hundreds of dogs, ranging from chihuahuas to a Tibetan Mastiff.
So how do we do it? In truth, it’s a wee bit more complicated than teaching a dog to sit when we ask them to. There are foundational behaviors we need to teach first, and I could write an entire course on teaching cooperative care (I’m actually working on that.). However, the gist of it is that we teach a consent behavior. Some refer to this as a “start button” behavior. This is a behavior that the dog demonstrates to tell us that we may proceed with whatever handling we intend to perform. Here’s a video of teaching one possible consent behavior: https://fb.watch/wRhCm6cypt/. Once the dog has learned the behavior, we gradually begin reinforcing the dog for performing that behavior while we do ever-so-slightly more invasive things to the dog. Here’s another video of beginning foot handling with a different dog: https://fb.watch/wRhJwXRjk8/. Here’s a video of making progress toward using a nail grinder with a yet even more different dog. The consent behavior for this guy is different, too, to accommodate his smaller stature. https://fb.watch/wRivqHgQho/ If at any time the dog stops performing the consent behavior, we stop all handling because the dog has removed their consent. We then slow down our progression and reinforce smaller progressive steps toward our final desired handling, such as grinding nails with a high-powered Dremel. It’s a process, and it doesn’t happen overnight. For some dogs, especially those with more trusting personalities who have never felt violated by being restrained for scary things, the process will move very quickly. For others who have a lengthy history of fear and restraint, the process will be a lot slower. But being able to give consent is empowering, and feeling empowered is confidence building. Dogs are willing to take more risks when they trust that they can say no at any time. Here’s a video showing the culmination of this training with my own dog, Truman: https://fb.watch/wRiR0hHw1k/
Think of it like an intimate partnership. If a random stranger suddenly grabbed you and held onto you, you might panic. Some people would freeze. Others would fight with everything in them. Neither response is indicative of feeling “okay” with the situation. This is because no trust has been built, and your power to consent over what happens to your body has been taken away. So maybe it’s a friend who suddenly grabs you and restrains you. Maybe they start removing your shoes, which objectively, isn't a big deal on its own. But they don’t give you any explanation. They just force themselves on you. You haven’t established the type of relationship where this behavior is okay, and since they have stolen your ability to consent, whatever trust you once gave them is now gone. Their behavior is now completely unpredictable, and you are powerless. Just imagine what that would do to your friendship. On the other hand, the intimate partner you have that you trust and that you enjoy has given you the confidence that if, at any time, you say, “stop,” they will absolutely, without question stop. And because of this trust, you not only allow but will participate in and find reinforcement in activities that you share together. While the intimacy between you and your dog is of a very different nature, the principles remain the same. Giving a person or a dog agency over their own body actually empowers them to say yes.
But what if your dog needs their nails trimmed right now because they are already long enough to be bad for the dog’s orthopedic health or they are scratching you and causing you harm? For dogs whose nail length is an immediate health concern, I recommend having them trimmed as short as possible by the vet while under sedation and then taking the time while the nails are growing out again to train cooperative care. It requires dedication, but it’s very doable. For puppies or dogs with sharp nails that are more of a health concern for our delicate human flesh rather than the dog’s health, you can usually teach them in a few short training sessions to file their own front nails using a scratch board. It’s not as efficient as grinding them yourself, but it will take the tips off while you train them to participate in nail grinding.
Feel a little overwhelmed by the process of teaching all these steps? That’s totally understandable. It really can feel like a lot, especially when we have been programmed with the mindset that our animals should do things because we said so like programmable automatons. But we can meet their needs for bodily autonomy while providing for their physical care, including nail trims, if we are willing to learn how; and the process can be a wonderful bonding experience. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you need some help getting started training cooperative care with your own dog. It's one of my favorite things to teach, and it can be life-changing for you both.