If you can hear the nails, they are too long

If you can hear the nails, they are too long

The simplest test for a dog's nails is to listen. If you can hear them click on a hard floor as the dog walks, they are touching the ground before the pad does, and they are too long. Most dogs on soft ground and pavements never wear their nails down enough on their own.

What we know, and what we don't

You will read in a lot of places, including, until this week, on our own homepage, that long nails push the toes up and shift the dog's weight back onto the pads, changing how it stands. It is a tidy explanation and it may well be true. But when we went looking for the study behind it, we could not find one. The one piece of research we did find measured stride, stance and the forces through the paws in healthy dogs before and after a trim, and found no change. So we have stopped saying it.

What the veterinary guidance does say is plain enough. Nails that touch the ground can split or tear, and a torn nail bleeds a great deal and hurts. Very long nails can curl round and grow into the pad. The dew claw, higher up the inside of the leg, never touches the ground and is the one most often forgotten, and the one most often found curled. Most dogs need a trim every three to four weeks.

Why owners avoid it

Because of the quick. Inside each nail is a blood vessel and nerve, and cutting into it hurts and bleeds. On pale nails you can see it as a pink core; on black nails you cannot, which is why so many dogs with black nails go untrimmed for months. The longer the nail, the longer the quick grows inside it, so a neglected nail cannot be cut back to a sensible length in one go. It takes several small trims, a week or two apart, letting the quick recede each time.

Clippers or a grinder

Clippers are quick and quiet but need a confident hand, and a clean cut close to the quick on a black nail is a guess. A grinder takes off a little at a time, so you can stop the moment you see the pale ring that means you are near the quick. It is slower, it makes a noise many dogs need a few sessions to accept, and it needs charging. Neither is better. The one you will actually use every three weeks is the right one.

If you are nervous, take off less than you think and do it more often. If the dog is nervous, pair it with something to lick and stop after one paw. A dog that has had one bad experience with clippers can take months to trust them again.

What we stock for this

References

  1. VCA Animal Hospitals. How to trim a dog's nails. vcahospitals.com
  2. Häusler K, Söhnel K (2026). Effect of nail trimming on gait and ground reaction forces in healthy dogs. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9:1728382. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
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