How to Cut your Dog's Black Nails

7/25/2019

The length of your dog's nails directly impacts their posture, movement efficiency and comfort when walking and running. Long nails cause pain when a dog puts weight on all four paws, and so dogs tend to shift their weight back to relieve pressure on the nails. This change in posture can lead to discomfort or even pain in the spine, shoulders, muscles and joints. With very long nails, the change in posture can cause negative orthopedic changes as a dog ages.

The hyponychium (also called the "quick") is the epithelium located beneath the nail plate at the junction between the nail shell edge and thicker structure underneath the nail. The images below feature my dog's unclipped nail, to show you exactly where the quick begins and what section of the nail is safe to cut.

The line where the structure of the underside of the nail changes is your safety line - do not cut past into the lighter colored fleshy underside of your dog's nail.

The first step is to take a look at your dog's nails and locate the edge of the quick where the structure changes into the black, hollow curvature of the nail itself. As illustrated in the photos above, the part you do not want to cut often looks flesh colored or off white.

You want to cut the black hollow shell portion of the nail, before the quick / fleshy underside of the nail. For an efficient clip, you will want to make TWO cuts to the nail. One vertical (red), and the other on a vertical slant (blue). This method of trimming will help the quick recede and allow you to cut your dog's nails shorter the next time.

Do not cut too much off the top on your second (or blue) cut, you just want enough to help encourage the quick to recede.

The ideal length of a dog's nails is short enough not to make noise when they are walking on hard surfaces, but long enough for your dog to utilize when running, climbing or digging.

Nails should be trimmed once a week, or once every two weeks depending on how fast your dog's nails grow.

Nail trimming is especially important for dogs with joint issues, any kind of bone/muscle pain, and senior dogs.

For more great information on natural dog health care (supported by scientific research), feel free to come join my exclusive closed Facebook group: K9 Instinct: Holistic Dog Health Care. In that group I share all of my new articles and any new research or news in the pet world.

7 Comments

Michelle Melfi

7/25/2019 01:12:18 pm

Very informative. I've been doing it wrong. Good to know. Thank you.

Diane Boysen

9/27/2019 12:41:03 pm

My dobie's nails are black and very HARD to cut. He seems very protective and seems to wince when I use clippers, but I have been using a dremel nail too for dogs and he's still a bit skittish, but I can file them down. I'm just very unsure exactly "where" the quick starts and ends and I am hyper sensitive to hitting the quick or causing him any pain. His nails are a challenge. Yes, I think I'm doing this wrong. Any pointers on how to use the Dremel to his advantage? I usually make a swipe with the Dremel on the sides and top and end...

erik

2/28/2021 10:38:12 am

First off, great pictures! I use a cordless impact gun with a course sanding wheel to dremel my dog’s nails. The key the nail trims in general is speed, the faster the better for the dog. Thus, the impact gun is set to its highest speed to grid away the nail the fastest for my large dogs. My system for grinding down the nail is following (note this for a regular weekly trim).

1. Grind the underside of the nail such that is purely flat. If using the 1st picture from the blog with the red curved line, the underside of dogs’ nail should resemble this picture with the tip of the nail being flat with underside of the nail bed. The underside of the nail will be clean, and now will have a clear distinct view of all the nail parts, even better than the great blog pictures. On the underside of the nail, it should show distinctly the outer nail, the dried old quick circle, and then excess nail length. This the first grind.

2. Grind the excess nail length off to (or just before) the old quick circle. The rotation of the grinding tool should be such the grind tool wants grind more of the top side of the nail vs the bottom side (or ride up the nail vs down the nail). This is safer, and also is effectively performing a combination of the major and minor cuts described in the blog at the same time. This is the second grind.

3. Using the grinding tool, start to round nail (left, right, up, & down) from the center of now removed excess nail trim. Around the center of the area the nail will change texture from something hard to some mailable. This mailable center often will look like the initial bead of flowing dried calk coming out a calk gun. The mailable bead is flexible and will bend in the direction pointed to. When this center part of the nail is exposed, the desired excess nail has been trimmed to just before the quick starts. Continue to round the nail and take excess nail off all areas of the nail minus the mailable center until satisfied. The end result of nail should be kind of pointed where the mailable center of the nail is the point.

If you grind too much, the nail will bleed. But unlike using a cutting tool, the bleed will be much smaller and more than likely a delayed bleeding response. After trimming all nails, check the nails again to see if any nails started to weep. It’s also a good idea to check for bleeding after the dog has its first outdoors, as dog's activity might grind the nails down a fraction more and initiate the bleeding.

If dogs’ nails are very long, modify the first grid to follow the angle of the first cut as described in the blog. Stop grinding when the mailable part of the nail is exposed. After a few trims, the quick will recede and the entire nail underside will now be mostly flat. The first grind will be minimal then and be more like a polishing the underside of the nail vs grinding, with the focus of the weekly nail trim more on reducing the nail overall length.
When griding, it’s going to be a process of figuring out the proper speed of the grinding tool that your dogs prefer. The sound frequency and the grinding vibration on the nail are the two factors I have observed on my dog. For my grind tools, a higher speed and thus frequency are more tolerated than lower speeds and frequency. In addition, the sound of frequency of the impact driver is preferred over a the cordless drill, dremel, and cheap dedicated dog sanding wheel tool.

Hanna

3/19/2021 10:48:31 pm

Hi! Good to know you technique! Is it a special impact gun, could you share a link to it and the sanding wheel?

Doug

1/22/2022 06:24:57 pm

I do the same thing with a small hand-held Dremel and carbide sanding disc so it doesn't wear out. Just remember everyone that sanding/grinding causes heat very quick. Only do a small amount then move to the next nail and so on. Then go back to the first nail to finish up. This gives time for the nail to cool down. I would say no more than 5 secs of grinding per nail at a time then 10 secs to cool down before going back.

James Uba link

12/16/2021 06:46:03 am

Thank you for your clear instructions. That’s really helpful especially on Covid-19 times and all groomers being closed.

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How to Cut your Dog's Black Nails

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