I'm still working on Nemo's nails. Well, I'm working on all the dogs nails, but it's Nemo I'm concentrating on... Today marks a milestone: I had the Dremel on and touched his nail! And he didn't flip out! Whoohoo!!
I have been working on Nemo's nails for awhile now and had done every tiny step I could think of before actually touching the moving Dremel to his nail. Finally I ran out of small steps! And I had to do it. (You see, I dislike trimming nails as much as my dogs do.)
Here are some of the steps we went through over the past three weeks. After successful completion of each step, Nemo earned a click and a smidge of some really delicious (and smelly) wet cat food.
- Ask Nemo to lay down (for my ease of getting to his nails)
- Touch his foot gently with my hand
- Touch a nail gently with my hand
- Hold his foot in my hand
- Manipulate each toe with my hand
- Wiggle each toenail with my hand
- Add duration to each of the above (so when it comes time to really trim those nails, he'll be used to me doing those things for the several seconds it'll take me)
- Turning the Dremel on and feeding (Dremel does not touch his feet at this point)
- Turning the Dremel off and stopping feeding
- Touching his toe with the Dremel OFF (not running at this point)
- Holding the running Dremel while my other hand handles his foot (Dremel did not touch nail)
- Touching the running Dremel to a toe very briefly
That's how far we've come to date. We still have a long way to go -- the three times I touched his nail with the running Dremel today didn't take enough off his nail to even notice. But it's progress! A little bit more practice and we'll have it!
