But We Touch Their Feet! Ep184

Episode 184, but we touch his feet. We touch his feet, just like the trainer and the groomer. And the veterinarian said, why is this dog still having a problem? That's our question for this week. 

This is the Creating Great Grooming Dogs show. I'm Chrissy Neumyer Smith. I'm a certified professional groomer, a certified behavior consultant for canines, a certified professional dog trainer. I'm a fear free certified groomer and. Fear free certified trainer. And I'm also a master groomer behavior specialists. I'm an instructor at the Whole Pet Grooming Academy, and I own Happy Critters in Nashua, New Hampshire. And this, my friends and colleagues is the show where grooming and training meet. 

So this week, we are going to talk about. Foot touching. It's really common advice. Most pet owners have heard this. We want to prevent problems. We want your dog to feel comfortable with having their feet done and their nails done by massaging their feet often. And a lot of our owners do that. A lot of our owners are really great about, Massaging that dog's feet pretty often. And getting that done. Now here's the problem. We still have problems with our dogs and their feet. And why is that? I mean, if, if you're thinking about it, but I massage his feet and a lot of our owners have been doing it and doing a great job, but why do we still see problems?

Now there are a couple of reasons. And the one I want to start off with is. Foot touching is not like nail trimming. Oh, I know everyone just went. What. But wait, but we touch his feet. But for many dogs that's enough. Okay. It's not a bad idea to touch their feet. Just that for so many dogs, that's not enough. For a lot of our dogs. They're like, ah, cool. Okay. Someone touches my feet and I don't mind when it turns into, touching them with tools or trimming nails.

So let's talk a little bit more about why that doesn't translate. So touching feet is an important part of doing a nail trim. But when an owner is massaging a dog's feet. Let's talk about just that foot massage thing that most of our owners do. And if you're an owner, you have probably done this. You've got your dog on the sofa and you're gently rubbing a foot and just kind of relaxing and your dog doesn't have to really do anything. They're probably laying on the couch and you're just like massage in their foot. And that is nothing like holding an individual toe. Holding an individual toenail. And then moving a tool and actually trimming. Or grinding. Think about some of the tools that we have. So let's talk about some of those. , We have touching the pot in a different way than many people do a foot massage. Foot massages tend to be kind of haphazard and like snugly wuggly. And that's a great place to start. Okay. Every dog should start there. If they can't handle that, they're not going to be able to handle other types of touching. Just that the problem is, is that it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't translate well to all the other things that we need them to be doing.

So let's talk about touching in terms of also individual toes, maybe it's part of you as an owner or as the handler, or as the person who's working with this dog. Pretending to have to really see that nail. But like, our focus is different than when we're just casually touching feet. When we actually are like, oh, I need to see that. What is that? What is that? They're out there. That's really different. When we're holding individual toes, when we're trying to pull hair back away from a toe. When we're trying to brush a foot. We have things like brushes and Combs, maybe scissors. Um, we have a Clippers, the hair trimmers, right? Those vibrate. They make some sound. have a variety of different types of tools that we might touch feet with and that's more than just a massage. It doesn't really say the same thing as a massage, as a foot massage.

Let's also talk about, the sprayer in the tub. It sounds weird and it...