Yesterday we had the mobile doggie parlor come visit which is normally fairly quick and pretty straight forward. Brock was the dog we were trying to get done as his nails needed cutting. The shampooing and washing of his fur, cleaning the ears and blow drying we never really had a problem with and yesterday was no different.
When it came to the cutting of his nails for some reason two of the giant nail clippers broke and left a small pair left which would not suffice for the task at hand. When it comes to cutting his nails for some reason it is game time and turns into a snapping crocodile. Brock sneezes when he is playing and is a sign of non aggression and as long as you play along you can get things done, but it will take a little time.
This morning the doggie parlor returned with some new clippers and now he had three people to deal with. I originally pinned him down, but he some how managed to throw me off his back. I had a pillow case which I put over his head and that did not really do the trick either. This was intended to calm him down as he was clearly excited by all the attention and he is so strong and powerful.
Owning a large dog that is this powerful you have to know how to handle them and be strong enough to subdue them if required. I have never had to jump in for bad behavior and this was more about him playing. How hard could this be to cut 20 nails? We managed to get the back ones done fairly easily and were managing to cut the odd one on his front paws.
I asked the two employees from the parlor if this is fairly normal and they said Brock is the only one. I knew the cheapish fee was going to rise so I grabbed a few doggie treats from the freezer which are like soft bones. This kept his mind occupied and more importantly his jaws busy.
Brock was not intentionally trying to bite because if he was we would have known about it. This breed has one of the most powerful jaws in the doggie world and if you are going to get bitten it would be rather nasty. Thankfully this was more like playtime and the little nips were painful due to the sharpness of his teeth, but he was not locking on which shows the playfulness.
This time there was no blood which is quite common even though we all sustained some playful nips. The second visit took around an hour which is longer than it took grooming two dogs yesterday besides Brocks nails. I think I need to learn how to do his nails myself as if it was just me I do not think it would have been such a struggle.
The final bill we negotiated which had slightly risen charging R350 for Brock and R250 for Mushroom. That is still cheap being less than $40 for two dogs and considering this is a home visit. The next visit we will make sure is in 6 weeks time and not 3 months because Brock needs to get used to this and see this as something normal and not playtime.
I tried to learn how to cut the nails myself as they said you can see the nerve endings and I cannot so I may actually try and find this in more detail on Youtube. Personally I have never been comfortable cutting a dogs nails or a parrots claws due to not knowing and not wanting to hurt them. My parrot is easy as she has the sand paper like perches and they file down naturally. Brock on the other hand goes for walks, but they never seem to wear down his nails as much as they should.
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It's always a bit sad and scary when they hit the quick. We had that quite a bit with our dog. For a long time she used to chew her nails and she would do a pretty good job so we never really had to mess with it.