Swank Pets Dog Blog

This is my fourth part in the series of how to groom a Yorkie or Maltese. In this section I’ll go into the procedures for dealing with the feet. First, let’s start off with your dog’s foot pads. A lot of times, hair will grow in between their pads. I usually trim these so the hair is even with the pads. If you wish, you can go in between the pads and trim more hair. It’s entirely up to you.

Once you finish trimming the hair on the pads, start by clipping the nails. If you have a puppy, then human nail clippers can usually do the job. In fact, I prefer using human nail clippers for puppies as I find it easier to do. If your dog is older, you can use a professional dog nail clipper such as this

These work extremely well and are perfect for thicker nails such as your dogs. Now to clip the nails, be careful not to clip to much of nail or else it will bleed. If it does bleed, don’t have a panic attack. Simply apply some pressure with a cloth until the bleeding stops. Basically, dog nails have an area called the ‘quick’ where blood is supplied. You DON’T want to cut past the quick or else you dog will experience some pain and bleeding. You want to cut about 2mm in front of the quick. I found this picture to illustrate

That yellow line above is where you should cut. With white nails, its a little bit easier to see where the quick is. As you can see, the nail is whiter at the tip and more pink/red closer to the dog’s pad. You just want to cut the tip of nail and of course avoid the quick. I advise just cutting a little at a time for beginners in order to avoid cutting too deep.

For black nails, its a lot tougher since its harder to see the color separation between the quick and the tip of the nail. In this case, just cut really small portions at a time, but making sure not to cut too deep. Just concentrate on cutting the tip of the nail in general. After cutting a small portion of the dark nails, look at the nails coloration to give you an idea of when to stop. Once you notice the nail becoming grayish pink, stop cutting. The picture below will give you a better idea.

So hopefully this helps in cutting your dog’s nails. It might take some practice but you’ll have it down in no time. Stay tuned for the next section of this series!