Trimming a white nail is fairly easy, for the pink of the quick (blood supply) can be seen easily. Place your nail clippers a little below where the pink stops and quickly make your cut. Black nails are a bit more challenging because the quick is not obvious.

So start by taking off the hook at the end of the nail, look at the core of the nail and continue to cut off small sections until the flesh part starts to become white, which is as far as you should go without damaging the quick.

Once the correct length is established for one nail, use it as a guide for the remaining nails. Should you accidentally trim the quick and end up with a bleeding nail, you can apply styptic powder or hydrogen peroxide, or else apply corn starch or flour which will help stop the bleeding. Keep the pet quiet and still and the bleeding should stop quite quickly.

Dog nails can be trimmed with clippers or filed manually or electrically. Pay attention to the dew claw (the little nail just up from the pads). Dogs can have these on both their front feet and occasionally on their back feet, and as these  don’t reach the ground to be warn away, they can often grow right around and painfully back into the pad, causing infection.

There are many different types of nail clippers and files. Personally, we recommend to use the guillotine type, since it’s the easiest to use as it tends to slice the nail cleanly, whereas pliers tend to squeeze, and sometimes crush, the nail. Filing is slow but quite efficient, and there is a new product on the market, an electric nail grinder with a safeguard on it, which is also very effective.

Tip: It really pays to trim nails regularly because the more you trim a nail, the further back the quick will recede. So, as time goes by, you continually reduce the risk of inadvertently cutting the quick and hurting the dog.