We have a 10 year old, English style chocolate (Tilly) and a 9 month old chocolate field style lab (Cooper). She is a large bitch, 24" inches at the withers and 74# to date. She is great on recall, even better than our 10 year old. She does the basic commands reasonably well, although stay has a limited duration. She is more people oriented than our 10 year old, and really wants to be petted some times. The problem comes when we need to restrain her for anything. Even though she keeps her nails worn down pretty well, she still needs a nail trim. When she was younger we didn't have a big problem trimming nails, but now she goes berserk if you show up with a trimmer. She has also decided that she does not want to be brushed with a Furminator or Zoom and Groom. She struggles mightily. and when she gets loose will not come back to me for some time. She plays keep away in the house, going around opposite sides of furniture etc. She does not bite or nip when trying to get loose, but she is very strong, and can almost take your fingers off if you are holding her collar. FWIW, the Vet gave up on getting a temperature the last two times we were there for shots or a checkup. Our first Chocolate, Ginger was diabetic the last 4 years of her life, and had to put up with insulin shots and blood sugar sticks for those 4 years. She never complained at all. When Cooper was a few months old we could restrain her without complaint. She was almost a lap lab, but as she has gotten older that has changed. She still sleeps on our bed, which is something of a challenge, given her size.
I'm working on using a little restraint, but no trimming or brushing, to see if I can get her a little more settled with the idea of being restrained.
This can be fixed with desensitization. Here is a video from Sophia Yin demonstrating the basic principles. There is a good one on grooming somewhere, I'll try to find it
Interesting video, but I would probably have to kill a sheep to get Cooper to sit restrained that long, even if I weren't trying to trim her nails. As soon as she realizes that she is not free to leave, she wants to go, and while she won't bite, she is very strong and and weighs 70+ lbs. Right now, I'm working on a little restraint, with rewards for not struggling. I'm also trying a Zoom and Groom with no restraint at all. It is working better than the Furminator. The clippers and the Furminator seem to really set her off. I can live without the Furminator, but we are going to have to deal with clippers eventually.
I have had the same with Tatze when I want to look in her eyes and ears. It was after a bout of eye drops. Every morning, for over six months, I have given her a chew after breakfast, I make sure she can see the chew then check eyes, ears or paws. I started with hardly a touch but now I can inspect normally. In another month or two I will get a bottle out but then spend a good long time before it goes near her.
Having to restrain your dog suggests that you are doing something to her she doesn't like. As Pippa has already posted desensitization will enable you to clip nails and stand nicely for grooming but it may take some weeks to resolve and a lot of patience.
You don't need to use restraint at all. One of my labs doesn't like having her nails clipped but I taught her to accept it while sitting in her basket over the space of a few days. Just start with a gentle touch - touch, click, treat - and work your way towards your final objective in stages. First touch her paw with your finger, then with several fingers, then grasp the paw, then lift it, then touch it with the clippers, etc etc. until she will let you hold her paw in one hand and clip the nails with the other. You may also find your dog prefers a nail grinder to the clippers. It's safer too. Again, desensitize gradually to the noise.
Here is an article on grooming dogs that don't like it http://www.thelabradorsite.com/12-easy-steps-to-grooming-a-labrador-who-hates-being-brushed/ Let us know how you get on
My dogs don't like having their paws touched, let alone having their nails clipped. So, I've been working on introducing a Dremel to file them. Here are some videos I took. This is after a couple of weeks of daily training. Shadow first... he's generally a dog that's super eager to please, but really struggles with this. So, at this point, we're building up the duration of me holding his paws without him struggling, just touching the (turned off) file to his nails. I'm treating him with prawns and smoked salmon - the really good stuff! Then, I turn the file on and work on moving it closer to his feet. We're nowhere near touching at this stage. (Ignore the date at the start!) Here is Willow on the same day, but farther along in the process. I had done more desensitisation with a metal file before this, so she got it a lot more quickly, even though she was far more nervous of having her feet touched, I think partly due to the fact she ripped a nail off last winter, but she's more nervous generally. I never forced her to have her foot held - she can move her foot away at any time and learnt to offer her foot for filing as a gesture that she's happy to go ahead (OK, she always offers the same foot, so I sometimes have to then lift the other one, but it's the gesture of "let's do this" that I'm after). This movement isn't on cue. She sees the file, understands what's going to happen and offers the foot. Some days, she's less keen, and that's fine. I let her dictate the pace and if she's not happy with it, then we stop. You can see how calm she is while the nails are being filed. This is not by magic. This did not happen in a day or two. This was weeks of work, taking it really, really slow with lots and lots of treats. You can see how long her nails are - this is because they grow like mad, but I completely stopped doing anything with her feet other than these short training sessions, once or twice a day, because I didn't want to over-face her. It would have destroyed all the hard work if I had restrained her during this process to get the nails cut. Now, I'm filing them three times a week, and they're getting gradually back to a better length. By being agonisingly slow with it, she now jumps up on the sofa when she sees the file come out, rather than trying to hide from it.
Oh, and sometimes you just have to go back a few (or a lot of) steps, or try another approach. Shadow just cannot get comfortable with the Dremel getting close to his toes when it's turned on, so I've given up on that for now and have started to use the metal file instead. He's really quite happy with this on certain toes and I can make 10-15 strokes with him staying quiet before giving a treat. Strangely, some toes seem to be a bit more sensitive, so I just take it more slowly with those. His nails are far softer than Willow's, and the metal file is making an impact, whereas it did basically nothing to Willow's. So, I'm happy to stay with the metal file for now, and maybe reintroduce the Dremel down the line once he's completely comfortable with what we're currently doing.
Thank you. I think it's easy to watch some of the videos and assume it can be achieved in one session. They can be misleading. I'm sure some dogs are able to manage really quickly, but it's not true for my two, so I wanted to show just how slow the process can be, but also how, by sticking with it and going so slowly, you can get there in the end - even when it feels like you never will.
Cooper does not mind us handling her paws and nails, but clippers or a grinder send her into orbit. I think the Zoom and Groom will be OK, but it is going to take a lot of work to get her nails trimmed. Right now the best solution is running on pavement, but we will keep working on desensitizing her.
