PediPaws Update...

Okay, so we used the PediPaws tool last night on 2 cats and our dog Gunnar. And the results were....

Meh.

First let me say that we did in fact try to acclimate the animals in the ways suggested in the instructions included, which was to run the tool near them while praising them, then run it next to their faces while giving them a treat and praising them.

So the cats tried to bite us and we had to wrap them in a blanket to get their nails trimmed without our eyes getting gouged out. As far as how it worked, well, it's basically like the electric smoothing/buffing tool a manicurist uses on acrylic nails (most girls will know what I'm talking about) or, kind of like a dremel (there you go guys). So a powered filing tool. I found that the way they limit the space you have to utilize the filing stone was annoying, but overall it worked in trimming the nails down to a nice smooth surface.

As far as Gunnar, well, it could've been worse. I laid the aforementioned blanket over Gunnar as he lay on his belly on the floor. I then straddled him and lightly laid myself over him while gripping his collar and trying to keep his face away from my daughter. She then took the tool to his nails. He responded with yelps and whines, struggling with me and acting like he'd love to bite either her, me, the PediPaws, or his own foot. None of which he did. The real problem was that his nails are as thick as a No.2 pencil and the less than powerful PediPaws just slowly ground away at his nail. It would've taken probably several mins for each nail, at least. This is unacceptable when wrangling a 100+ lb dog that is freaking out and near his breaking point. So we stopped on the second nail. We decided to go to the local pet store and see if they had some professional clippers that could get through his thick nail and would be a lot quicker. There we were told by the seasoned employee, in almost a hushed whisper like we were receiving state secrets, that he himself bought a dremel to do just this thing on his dog, and it works wonderfully and is pretty quick since it's much stronger than the 2 "C" batteries in our recent purchase. And as I realize, yes that is basically what the PediPaws is and that we already own a dremel, one thought came to mind. D'Oh!

So as soon as I can get my husband to dig the dremel out of his stacks of tools, we will be trying that. Another update to follow.