In case you ever caught yourself wondering, Is it essential for a dog’s nails to be trimmed?, I am here to confirm that yes, indeed, it is essential*.
*At least concerning those inner front nails which seem completely useless and never have the opportunity to touch the ground—except for, of course, when your dog splits his. Yes, this is today’s story.
I suppose there are dogs out there who are oblivious to the harm that man can cause them and willingly offer their paws to be attacked with clippers. My dog, however, is not one of them. After attempting to clip his nails ourselves when we first got him, we decided to leave it to the professionals. But then, after two years of seeing that the professionals weren’t much more capable of handling a 60-pound dog who is terrified of sharp things touching him, we made a plan to attempt to do it at home, sneaking up on the longest, curviest nails while he slept.
And then we forgot all about this plan.
I blame COVID.
I quickly remembered this plan when, two months after he should have gotten his nails clipped, I saw him hobble towards me, paw lifted, his left ‘thumb’ nail split with a few droplets of exposed blood.
After screaming for Lance and staring at Stitch like, “Tell us boy, what do we do? What do we do?”, I called the vet.
I don’t know what I expected. That they would say, “Go ahead and lop that sucker off yourself” or “Come right in, we don’t have any other patients today”. I don’t know. But when I heard I could come in at 3:40 PM, panic set in. It was 10:30 AM. What was I supposed to do for five hours with an injured dog? And, to make matters worse, I had class that day!
I ignored all the Miranda Rights of COVID protocol that the receptionist was saying and said, “What do we do in the meantime?”
In Lance’s makeshift office, Stitch was laying on the floor, under Lance’s feet
“Keep him off of it. If it gets worse, go to the emergency vet.”
I’d wanted an earlier opening to magically appear, not to be told the obvious. But, refusing to pay an emergency vet fee just for walking through their doors, we waited. Stitched hobbled around, whined, and was plain miserable.
What I envisioned happening when Lance brought him to the vet and what actually happened were pretty much the difference between me now as a dog person and me in the 10th grade—as not a dog person. Polar opposites, you get it?
I thought the technician would come outside, Lance would pick Stitch up, and she would cut the nail off right there.
Nope.
Exhibit A: How Lance holds Stitch, and therefore, how Jon holds Stitch
They put him under, removed the nail completely, wrapped his paw with enough gauze to stretch from here to Trenton, wrapped that with a yellow ‘cast’ like material, and then, for good measure, taped it at the top and bottom.
When he woke up, his eyes bulged at attention and he jumped off the couch and ran into the kitchen, freaking out over this new attachment on his arm. For three days there was a lot of nervous panting—which terrified me—and a lot of weariness.
The vet told Lance the cast could come off in 3-4 days and after carrying him up and down stairs and having to put a plastic bag around his cast every time he went outside—we opted for taking it off on day three.
Knowing they would put him under again to take it off, we were firm in the decision that we would take it off ourselves. How hard could it be?
We started at 4 in the afternoon and the final bit of gauze was removed at 10 PM.
So, the answer is, incredibly hard.
As we tried to gently remove the cast, Stitch would go for us the way he goes for dogs he is first introduced to: with murder in his eyes and a ferocious desire to be left alone.
Though, I guess if someone had cut my fingernail off, I might feel the same way, too.
He wanted so desperately to go for a walk, despite the immense difficulty.
Afterward:
Stitch is completely fine now. As soon as the cast was off, we took him for a walk and he raced down the sidewalk, happy for his foot to finally be free.
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