Great Handling Tips

 

 

Hello fellow groomers!  How are you doing with those puppies, or cutting nails on a dog that is resissting you! Welll, here you will find some great tips for handling a resistant pet so you can accomplish what youneed to do to themn. Actually, if you get them young enough they can be very easy to work on.  I tell my customers to bring them to see me as young as 8 weeks.  You don't have to do much to them.  Juststart handling them to get them use to it.  But the older they get they start developing bad habits, so get them young.  So in this article I'm going to talk about a couple of ways to accomplish the work you have to do on puppies.  And not just puppies.  These techniques work on other resistant dogs too, like scared dogs, or old dogs etc...

 

 

 

In these types of grooming situations (working on puppies, or any kind of difficult dog) it is very helpful to have some extra support in handling the pet on the table. I find it extremely helpful to use the double grooming arm and double loop system. For one, this keeps your dog form constantly turning circles on you, but there are other benifits as well. There are double grooming arms on the market that connect together but there are several reasons why I prefereseparate arms and loops as seen in the picture at the left. You can adjust the height front and back as needed. If you have the back strap attached to the side of a grooming arm, it can easily slip off the back of the pet from wigglingaround. You can also adjust the position of the arms from the front or back of the table as needed. Like when the dog wants to have his face right in yours you can put the grooming arm further back on the table to keep him where you want him while working on the back end of him. Now we have the pet secure on the table where we want him. What about getting that puppy to let you cut the toe nails, shave the face or feet...

   

 Lets take the example of cutting nails and the puppy, or any other resistant dog,  keeps jerking the foot away and screaming   Here it is... DON'T LET GO!!  If you stop what you are doing and let go of  "Fido" you are letting him have his way and giving in to him.  He will learn that is how to get you to stop what you are doing.  He is training you!  NO!  That's what they do at home.  You are the boss in the grooming shop.  You let "Fido" have his little temper tantrum and scream but you   DO NOT LET GO!  You can stop what you are doing if there is the danger of hurting the dog, like cutting the nail to short and making it bleed while he is fighting you, or poking him in the eye if you are working on the face, but you hang on and  DO NOT LET GO!  When "Fido" figures out you are not hurting him and he settles down, you immediately lighten your grip, not letting go, and praise him.  As you continue what you are doing and  he acts up again, tighten your grip again as needed but also make your voice very stern in telling him NO! and after a few times he figures out he isn't going to get away with the same thing he gets away with at home.  You are training the dog how to behave and you are not going to hurt him.  With puppies or dogs that are not handled often, they are scared and just not use to what you are trying to do to them.  In the long run, you will have much better response from the dog by teaching it in this manner rather than just trying to man handle the poor dog into submission. 

This technique even works with the toughest dogs that you may have to muzzle and get very stern with the first few times.  If you get to work on them again and again, they learn you are not trying to kill them and you can become friends with them.  There are many dogs that use to be very tough that I don't even have to muzzle anymore because they have learned they are not allowed to bite.  And because I don't hurt them and get unnecessarily rough with them, they learn to trust me.  It makes the grooming experience much nicer for you and "Fido".

Something that is very scary for puppies or dogs you don't see on a regular basis is putting the clipper up to the face.  The vibration and noise is scary to them.  One of my readers that use to be a nurse wrote back this explanation to me about why clippers are so scary around the head.  Much of the face and head are empty chambers that echo with vibration...a bunch of sinuses that reverberat and really feel weird when clippers are passed over them.  Thus the dog screams and squirms.  Thank you for that tid bit Lynn.  (See, I'm always willing to learn.)  The way you get the resistant dog to over come this so you can safely work on the face with clippers is turn your clipper on, hold the body of the clipper against the head, blade aiming away from the face and hold it there until the dog stops fighting.  Do not turn the clipper off, do not move the clipper away from the head when the dog starts screaming or jerking away and  DO NOT LET GO of the dogs face until he stops fighting.  Then slowly start using the blade on the face.  When the dog starts struggling again, do not take the clipper away from the face.  Just turn the blade away from the face again and hold it against the head until the dog settles down enough that you can continue your work.  It may take more than once holding the clipper against the head for the dog to figure out it is not being hurt.

 

 

If the dog is just so resistant that they really might get hurt, such as trying to shave under the eyes of Shih Tzu's or Lhaso's, then give up the clippers and use your thinning shears. To get a dog not to be afraid of you working so close to the eyes, what I do is hold on to their cheeks, put my little finger right under their eye and gently rub back and forth until the dog stops fighting and sees I am not trying to poke his eye out.  Using the thinning shears here is safer because they are not pointed like other scissors, you can basically lay them right on the skin and very gently start working them without scaring the dog so much and there is not as much chance of cutting them.  All of these techniques take persistence and patience but teaching your dogs to trust you and not making the grooming experience a traumatic event for them makes you a better groomer than someone down the street from you that is only interested in volume not quality of grooming.  And, yes, quality includes the way you handle the animals too, not just how your trims look.  And your customers will notice the difference!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Grooming!

Jessica