If you’ve made it to this section of our groom training course, your pup has successfully made contact with their foot and a human hand, willingly. This in itself is a huge step in successful foot handling, but we all know there’s a lot more to it than that.
For a dog to be successful at foot handling in a groom setting, they need to be fine with having their foot held and moved in a variety of ways. This includes:
- Nails being touched and squeezed
- Vibrating tools on their paw pads
- For shaved dogs, vibrating tools on the entire leg
- Having the foot held and moved in a variety of ways.
You can’t do this with a high-five, but the high-five we taught has laid the groundwork for your pet to get comfortable with the whole leg being touched. In this section, we’re going to pair touching the leg, starting at the shoulder, with a reward.
The goal is for the dog to have positive feelings when they receive a touch on their legs, especially their feet and nails. Let’s begin!
Starting at the shoulder
Most people pet their dogs on the back, and unsurprisingly, very few dogs have issues with being shaved or worked with on the back. The problem begins when the shaving begins anywhere else—especially sensitive spots like feet!
Since grabbing the feet without explanation will probably cause a poor emotional response in your dog (not something we want) we’re going to start by touching the dog in a neutral area, the shoulder.
We touch here because it’s not a terribly common petting spot, but it’s also not a sensitive area for your dog.
Choose a time when both you and your dog are relaxed and touch your dog on the shoulder. Immediately give them a small food reward. (We’re going to do this a lot, so small is better.)
Keep touching your pup gently on the shoulder, and then immediately giving them a food reward, until your dog is looking for the food reward in response to being touched on the shoulder. Here’s a great video of the Nerdy Nail Trimmer working with a dog. Watch how the dog gets a nail cut, and responds to the nail cutting by looking for the treat. This is our end goal.
Move to the Elbow
This will not be based on a number of sessions, or a number of repetitions. You need to watch your pup and see how they respond. If you touch them on the shoulder and they’re hunting around for their treat, it’s time! Otherwise, keep working with their shoulder until they’re clearly expecting a treat.
When this happens, move a little lower and start touching around the elbow area instead. Touch the elbow and give your pup a treat until your dog is clearly expecting treats for having their elbow touched too.
Move Two Inches Down
When your pup is eagerly anticipating treats for an elbow touch, move just a couple inches lower and repeat the same process again. If you moved to mid-leg, you’ve gone too far down. Touch your pups leg, give them a treat, touch the leg, give them a treat, and keep going in that way until the dog is eagerly looking for a treat after receiving a touch.
Move Down By Degrees
The process is the same all the way down the leg. Keep moving down the leg an inch or two at a time, until you reach the foot. Most dogs are fairly fine with having their legs touched, but their feet are ticklish. If your dog:
- Pulls their foot away
- Flinches
- Walks away
- Goes from panting to snapping their jaws shut
- Shows any aggression at all
These are all signs you’ve approached the foot too soon and need to go back to where the dog isn’t worried at all. You don’t want them pulling away, dancing, or reacting to receiving a touch in any way besides hunting for those snacks.
If you can stroke the top of your dog’s paw and they don’t react at all, apart from expecting a treat, you can move on to shaping different ways of touching the feet from there. These include:
- Touching/stroking a nail
- Squeezing nails
- Touching paw pads
When your dog is completely comfortable with getting touched on one leg, start on the next one. Keep going until your pup is completely comfortable receiving a gentle touch all the way down the leg, including nails, on all four feet.
Regarding Grooming During This Time
I will have a separate article to address this more in-depth, but I did want to make it clear that desensitizing your pup’s legs can’t be done in a week. It will likely take several weeks to fully desensitize each leg.
Your pup should continue to be groomed, if it is possible to do so, during this time. The hair is not going to magically stop matting up because you are working with your dog for a better outcome. Your dog’s nails are not going to stop growing during this project.
If your dog has been banned from groom shops, you may have to get your dog sedated for grooming while you work on the behaviors. You should still do this, making the process as kind and gentle as possible for your dog, because grooming severe matting/long nails is painful and can make their experiences worse.
This groom course can’t be done in a month between grooms. It’s a long term program meant to realize permanent change in your dog, but grooming unfortunately can’t be put off for months or years while you improve your dogs reactions to grooming.
Similar Posts:
- Introducing Foot Handling
- Introduction to Tail Desensitization
- How To Make Your Dog Like Nail Trims
- Foot Handling: Touching a Target
- How to desensitize your dog to mouth handling
