How to cut your chihuahua’s nails

Do you worry when it’s time to cut your chihuahua’s nails. Keeping your chihuahua’s toenails well maintained is an important part of dog ownership. Although chihuahuas have minimal grooming requirements, keeping their toenails trimmed is one aspect of grooming that must be done frequently to keep them in good health.

Many people are afraid to cut their chihuahua’s nails because if you cut them too short, they will bleed. There’s no set length for the vein inside the nail, called the quick, either. They can even grow over time, creating longer and longer nails.

Luckily, learning to cut your dog’s nails is easy, even if your dog has black nails. The trick is to look at the tip of the nail, where you’ve just cut, instead of viewing them from the side.

The first step is to cut a very small sliver off the tip of the nail. As small as you can cut while still getting something off. 3 millimeters or less, if you can help it. The goal is to cut just enough off the tip so you can see what the interior of the nail looks like.

Many nail clippers have a guard (that metal stick that can swing around and cover the hole the nails go through) to help make sure you don’t clip too much off. This guard can help you make smaller cuts but can still make cuts that are too big.

Once you’ve cut the nail, you should see a white, chalky interior. This white chalky interior is the dead part of the nail and has no feeling. You are looking for a dot in the center of the nail. Keep cutting back with those very small, 3-millimeter cuts until you see that black dot. When you see the dot, stop! That’s the tip of the vein, or the quick.

It’s often easier to get those super short cuts with a Dremel rather than a clipper. A single swipe of the Dremel can reveal the interior of the nail, with little to no risk of bleeding. Keep going one swipe at a time, until you see that dot in the center.

It’s really that easy! This method allows you to cut any type of dog nail and doesn’t require you to see through the nail to cut them.

Dealing with difficult dogs

It would be wonderful if your chihuahua would hand over their paw and wait patiently while you cut them, but that’s not often the case. Most dogs will wiggle or pull at least a little bit, and some chihuahuas can be extremely dramatic about getting their nails cut!

Even if your dog hates having their nails cut, there are a few ways you can still maintain them at home without causing them harm.

Option 1: The scratch board

The scratch board is a brilliant way to solve the problem of long nails, even if you plan to do other methods as well. A scratch board lets the dog cut the nails themselves, instead of you doing it. Since they don’t have the stress of having their paws handled, dogs tend to have a more positive experience with the board.

The scratch board is essentially a large nail file your dog scratches. They run their nails from the top to the bottom, and just a few swipes a day on each paw can keep the nail in check. Most dogs can learn to cut their front nails in just a few days, the back nails in a few weeks.

This doesn’t work well for dew claws, but if your dog is very opposed to nail trims, only having to cut two nails is a lot better than cutting all of them.

Option 2: Wear them down naturally

One method to keeping nails short that really isn’t utilized enough is long walks on hard surfaces. A mile a day on asphalt or concrete is often enough to keep nails in check. This is best started after a fresh nail trim and will more likely slow down the need for nail trims rather than stop them. This technique, used in combination with the alternative cutline, is also a great way to shorten the quicks.

Option 3: Desensitizing Your Dog to Nail Clipping

Long term, the best solution for your dog is to desensitize them to the process itself. This takes a long time, weeks to months, but will benefit your dog the most. Desensitizing a dog to nail trims involves changing their feelings about getting their nails cut, by pairing each part of the nail clipping process with something positive, like a yummy treat.

A common mistake when desensitizing a dog to nail clipping is to rush through the process. If you started by touching your dog’s feet, you’ve gone too fast. Desensitization might be showing them a set of clippers from so far away they know you can’t possibly cut their nails, and then tossing them a yummy treat to eat.

It’s best to pair this with scratch boards or other techniques while desensitizing the dog, so they don’t get set back by the fresh experience of getting their nails cut during the process.

Option 4: Troubleshooting the nail trim itself

Dogs unfortunately can’t tell us in refined detail what they feel. We can tell our dogs don’t love having their nails clipped because they are wriggling, screaming and fighting. Why though? If you can figure out what specific part they don’t like, it can change the whole grooming experience.

One common cause for a dog disliking nail trims is that they can see what you are doing. Holding the paw in front of them so they have a full view of the nail clipping experience can scare them. Holding the dog like a football, with their head poked out between your arm and torso, can help hide the nail clipping process from view.

If you find this difficult, a sling can help. A sling is a grooming device that suspends a dog up in the air with their legs popped through holes. They can’t see what you are doing, and it can sometimes make them feel more calm.

Other reasons include not liking the crushing sensation of the nail clippers, which can be resolved by using clippers like the red-handled Miller Forge style, or using a Dremel. Dull clippers hurt!

It can also be that the dog’s feet are being held too high. This is particularly common with chihuahuas, because their legs are so much shorter than other dogs. It’s easy to twist a back leg up over their ears trying to get a look, not realizing your dog wasn’t prepared to do yoga that day.

Final thoughts

If you focus on taking the smallest possible cuts off the dog’s nail at a time, cutting the nails is often the easiest part of the process. It’s often dealing with the wiggling that comes along with it that makes cutting your chihuahua’s nails harder.

These tips and tricks can help you get through the process with your pup so that they can enjoy all the health benefits of short, well-maintained nails.

About the author

Andrea Kuska is an experienced groomer & dog blogger in the Pacific Northwest. She has three senior chihuahuas who are the inspirations for her writings at All Things Chihuahua. https://www.allthingschihuahua.com/