Stress free, restraint free nail trim on 7-8 month old Percival! Husbandry skills don’t have to be stressful!
Depending on your dog most of them need their nails trimmed at least monthly to maintain them at an appropriate length, long nails can cause discomfort and early onset arthritis for your pup. I cut my dogs nails very often, while we only need to take small slivers off when we do it helps me to stay on a consistent schedule!
Does your dog struggle with nail trims? You’re not alone! While some dogs have a poor experience with nail trims, others are simply born being more adverse to it. Consider cooperative care or a solid training plan to set your pup up for success! If you and your furry companion are struggling we would love to hear from you!
Nail Trim Progress! Here is we’re we are currently at with nail trims, we still have a ways to go but he has come a long way! If you or anyone you know is struggling with husbandry skills please reach out and I’d be happy to help! They don’t have to be stressful or something you both dread doing ❤️
Loose Leash Walking! This can be something that seems impossible when training your puppy, but with time and patience you can have an amazing walking partner! If you would like to learn more on how I train my dogs how to walk on leash please feel free to message and I would be happy to help! This is only one of so many ways to train it!
✨ Cooperative Care ✨Here is a real world example of training and the progress we’ve made!Pyro found nail trims aversive from the day I brought him home, while he could be bribed with some food to do his nails it only became worse as our nail trims continued. This happened despite the fact that I never held him down for nails, cut his nails too short or made any of it a bad experience. In fact he always got yummy treats and lots of praise during the nail trims. Sometimes it doesn’t take anything big and scary for a dog to decide they don’t appreciate something. About 1.5 months ago I decided to take a cooperative care approach to nail trims rather than the desensitizing and counter conditioning we were doing before. While they do work and have a place in dog training, I feared damaging our relationship or making him feel like he has no other choice if he wants the reward. Cooperative care allows him to opt in and out of the training as he pleases, at no point do I withhold a reinforcer, punish him for not engaging/moving away or force him into anything he doesn’t want to do. This helps maintain the strong bond I’ve worked very hard to create and creates a trust between the two of us, at no point will I force him into something he finds scary or aversive unless it is absolutely necessary. It’s a promise that I will always work with him to maintain his comfort and mental wellbeing, even if it makes taking a little longer to do things. This is our progress so far, working on our nail trims about once a week for around 10 mins for the past 1.5 months. In total about 60 minutes of training. Due to his age a few things have taken priority so this has been sitting a bit on the back burner, if we had invested more time I am positive we could be much farther along. But real life can sometimes be hard to fit in even a 10 minute training session with everything else! This last session we fit in just before heading to work this morning!I am very happy that I can
✨ Cooperative Care ✨
Here is a real world example of training and the progress we’ve made!
Pyro found nail trims aversive from the day I brought him home, while he could be bribed with some food to do his nails it only became worse as our nail trims continued. This happened despite the fact that I never held him down for nails, cut his nails too short or made any of it a bad experience. In fact he always got yummy treats and lots of praise during the nail trims. Sometimes it doesn’t take anything big and scary for a dog to decide they don’t appreciate something.
About 1.5 months ago I decided to take a cooperative care approach to nail trims rather than the desensitizing and counter conditioning we were doing before. While they do work and have a place in dog training, I feared damaging our relationship or making him feel like he has no other choice if he wants the reward.
Cooperative care allows him to opt in and out of the training as he pleases, at no point do I withhold a reinforcer, punish him for not engaging/moving away or force him into anything he doesn’t want to do. This helps maintain the strong bond I’ve worked very hard to create and creates a trust between the two of us, at no point will I force him into something he finds scary or aversive unless it is absolutely necessary. It’s a promise that I will always work with him to maintain his comfort and mental wellbeing, even if it makes taking a little longer to do things.
This is our progress so far, working on our nail trims about once a week for around 10 mins for the past 1.5 months. In total about 60 minutes of training. Due to his age a few things have taken priority so this has been sitting a bit on the back burner, if we had invested more time I am positive we could be much farther along. But real life can sometimes be hard to fit in even a 10 minute training session with everything else! This last session we fit in just before heading to work this morning!
I am very happy
Muzzle training!
This is such an amazing tool to teach every dog! You never know when you might need one incase of an emergency or somewhere you’re bringing even the best behaved pup might require them to wear one!
Muzzle training is a great way to keep your pup stress free if that situation ever comes up! It’s also something I find when trained right they have a lot of fun with!
Here’s Pyro in only his second session! If you’d like to learn more please don’t hesitate to reach out! 🩷
