Brown Dog Treasures

We all know how important it is to keep our dog’s nails trimmed. Untrimmed nails can cause serious problems for your dog. Nails that are too long can hinder your dog’s mobility. Older dogs can also have a tendency to slip on wood or tile floors. Just as in older humans, slips and strains become more dangerous.

Over the years we had given up trying to clip our Guinness’s nails ourselves. Labs tend to have very thick, difficult to trim nails. To make matters worse, Chocolate Labs have dark toe nails, making it impossible to see the quick. After a few painful yelps during nail trimming when Guinness was a puppy, we decided to always let his Vet (or one of his techs) handle this for us. $10 once a month seemed like a small price to pay for this service and Guinness like the people at his Vet’s office. He began to see this visit as a social call so he has never really minded visiting the Vet.

In the last year or so I have been noticing that Guinness seemed to need to go for a trimming more and more often, we are now at once every two weeks and his nails always seem to still be too long.

I found out that this is common in senior dogs. The nails can become thicker and more brittle and the quick gets closer to the surface so that you can’t always trim off as much of the nail as necessary.

We were watching TV one night and saw an advertisement for a product called Peticure. We copied down the web address. The next day we received a pet industry trade magazine in the mail. They also had an advertisement for this products.

If ytou have not seen this, it is basically a dremel type of tool. The difference here is that it does not have the high pitched sound of a regular dremmel, that often frightens dogs. It also has a guard or cover around the sanding drum which should help guide the tool smoothly across your dog’s nails.

It sounded like just what we needed. We waited three weeks for this thing to come and when it arrived we were VERY disappointed. Fist of all our model did not look at all like the picture on the box. It seemed very flimsy and we had ordered the upgraded, more professional model! It was hard to put together. When we finally had it going we realized that the sanding drum did not fit properly over the dremel. It seemed very loose. We went online and watched an insturction video to make sure we had put it together correcctly.

When we were satified that we had done everything according to instruction, we decided to give it a try. Armed with a bag full of venison treat for Guinness, we went to work. Within 5 seconds of operating the Peticure, the sanding drum slipped down off the dremel.

The next day we called the company. To their credit they were very nice. They told us that the sanding drums should fit tightly and perhaps we had a defective model. We decided to send the thing back. They do promise us a refund of the purchase price. We are out the shipping cost both ways.

I found the whole experience very disappointing. There now some similar items coming out on the market. Brown Dog Treasures will be traveling to Super Zoo in Las Vegas in September. We will have a chance to try out many new products. We will keep you posted on which products we think will be beneficial for you.

If anyone else has had an experience with one of these newer grooming devices, please let us know.