Mollie is horrible with trimming her hair....

Good grooming practices are essential for maintaining health and happiness for you and your dog. This is a forum to exchange tips and advice for proper care of your dog's hygiene needs.

Mollie

787384

Barked: Sat Jun 16, '12 2:33pm PST


	She will let me do her back all day long but how dare I think of touching her feet or rear. She bites, and it hurts. My neighbor gives her dogs Benadryl before she grooms them, have any of you ever done that and is it safe? She weighs around 12 pounds.

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Happy

The Boy Wonder

Barked: Sat Jun 16, '12 9:09pm PST


	Personally rather than giving her pills this would be something I would teach as a training exercise. It Can be made better if you are patient at it, it can be time consuming though, but in the end it will make both you and her a lot happier than either of you will be if you drug her every time you try to trim her hair. Look into clicker/marker training if you don't know anything about it. If she's not familiar with markers you will need to charge the mark first. Once she has the idea that the clicker means food you can move forward. You want to do two -five sessions a day with a handful of very small treats (standard size is the size of a pencil eraser) that handful is your 'sessions worth' that is the length of a session so neither of you get bored or frustrated. (keep in mind since she is getting extra treats that you'll need to cut back a bit on meals to account for the extra calories) First step Touch a foot - On the first day you will want to simply touch a foot and click the moment your hand touches her foot you want to time it so she doesn't have time to try to bite. If you have to hold a treat in your clicker hand and while she's looking at that hand tap the paw in question. You're rewarding her letting you touch the feet. Let this go on for a day, when she's comfortable with one foot move to two, remember to keep sessions very short. When she's comfortable with two move to three and so forth. Now that you can touch all four paws switch it up, make sure you can touch them in different orders and with different hands, you don't want to try to hold them, pick them up or even touch them for a long time at this point you just want her to get used to you touching them and associate her feet with good things. When she's getting excited when you go to play this game you can now move up the requirements. Go back to the first foot and start counting out loud One.. Two while you're touching it Click and treat. Work the same way you did before making sure she's comfortable with each new foot before adding another Any time you add another requirement to this game you have to step back a bit on some of the other requirements so that you can make sure she's comfortable. Now that you can touch them all and she's comfortable you can start picking up a foot, just pick it up and let it go, Do not rush and do not try to hold it. If you push her at this stage in the game you will make her suspicious all over again. Continue the pattern remember that while this whole thing may take you a lot of time eventually you can desensitize your dog to almost anything The same idea works for brushing, for touching face, for trimming for nail clipping... just about anything. You just have to remember to take it slow and work within your dog's comfort zone. If you do find that you've rushed and she get's fussy at a step take Two steps back and practice at that step for a few sessions before moving forward to the previous step. You can get there, it will take time.

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Noah

Herpaderp-apotam- us

Barked: Sun Jun 17, '12 4:16pm PST


	In our salon, we will not take a dog that has been sedated or drugged in any way because once that pill wears off, your dog is going to be extra bad because it's going to be sluggish and confused. So I don't ever recommend people drug their dogs to groom them, with some exceptions.

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George

Tough Guy

Barked: Mon Jun 18, '12 9:44am PST


	If you're brushing yourself, using benidryl (sp?) is probably ok. Our vet even suggested it for flying, rather than a tranquilizer. He felt it was better, because it relaxed them, without the sedation. We use the melt on the tongue children's type, so they can't spit it out. Chester, who's twice my size at 10 pds, gets a whole one, and I get a half, but ask your vet what amount he thinks is best for your pet. But if you're taking your pet to a groomer, then nothing. The groomer should know how to deal with a biting dog, and a good one will work with the dog until they both know who's boss, without the dog being harmed, or terrorized. I may be small, but I bit and scratched when anyone tried to groom me, but it didn't take my groomer long to stop me from doing that. And I like her, I really do, she's much better at it then my people ever were!

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Mollie

787384

Barked: Mon Jun 18, '12 4:46pm PST


	She's 15 so that has made training her to do anything rather difficult. Very stubborn little dog. It took me forever to train her to just not bite my feet because she felt like it. She was my mothers dog and the groomer mother used never cut her dew claws and when I got her they were circled around. The groomer/vet I used finally asked me to not bring her back because she had bitten so many people, and I don't blame them at all. Touch her feet and this 9 pounder turns into a 500 pound dog made of steel. That's the only reason I asked about giving her Benadryl. I need to trim her feet and nails and around her face but don't want to be cut up.

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Happy

The Boy Wonder

Barked: Mon Jun 18, '12 9:45pm PST


	With her age then you will want to ask your vet. I would hate to overdose her especially at her age as it could cause complications for her. Call the office and ask their opinion.

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Mollie

787384

Barked: Sun Jun 24, '12 1:27pm PST


	I have three others that are wonderful. I did the same thing with them that I've done with Mollie and they're all so use to getting groomed and will let me do anything. The last vet used a button on her to avoid being bitten but Mollie's breathing is so bad that it worried her. For the mere 9 pounds that she weighs, she can make anyone fear her. lol I'm giving her aspirin right now for her back pain and that seems to make her a little sleepy so I tried to take full advantage of that. Once I take all the Band-Aids off my hands I'll try it again...........