Video: Clipping a Dog's Broken Toenail

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Dogs' toenails will often break on their own. Learn what to do when your dog has a broken toenail, in this free pet health care video with tips from a veterinarian.

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Marie May 10, 2011
After seeing lots of blood on my stairs and kitchen floor, I found my do had torn his dewclaw almost off! As this was 11:30 at night, I was SO THANKFUL to find this video! Thanks so very much Dr. Mulligan and Ehow!

Video Transcript

Hi I'm Dr. Adrienne Mulligan of Camp Verde Veterinary Clinic in Arizona and I'm here today to talk to you about broken toenails. So now lets say that your dog comes home limping or maybe your notice that he is paying extra attention to a toe and he is licking his toe and one way that you could actually notice that is that his toe may be brown and you would think that it is blood and may not be blood. It might be saliva. Saliva stains like blood. So if he is really paying attention to a toe and making it turn brown you should have a look at it. Now if you look at that toe and he may not want you to because it hurts that toenail may be broken and it may be dangling. What happen is that actual toenail breaks of there quick which is the pink part in his toes and that would actually would be dangling to the point to where it gets caught on things and it is painful. So the object is to try to get it off so it is not dangling and getting injure more if you can but, remember that this is very painful. So the first thing you are going to want to do with your dog is muzzle him. Everyone should have a muzzle for there dog in a emergency. But, for short nose breeds muzzles are not always the most effective thing because of the shape of there face. So having a least a elizabethan collar around can help protect you as well and help her to help him. At least this way you are protected from him if he tries to bite you. Don't do that we are going to put it all the way. So what I'm going to show you is you want to take a little pair of any kind of scissors sharp sharps. If you can even without dogs without broken toenails don't really like it but, if you can snip away anything that is hanging and dangling. Then you are going to want to try to stop the bleeding if you have styptic powder in your kit and then you can use that otherwise you could use basic flour that you would use to bake a cake. Pack that toenail so it stops the bleeding and then put some antibiotic ointment in with it and then you are gong to want to apply a bandage so you are going to want to use a telfa pad that you keep in your first aid kit and some vet wrap to make a little bandage. You basically want to put a little bit of pressure but not to much pressure you don't want it to tight but you want to make enough pressure around that toe. All around the end of it to. That is going to be a little painful. Then you could put a little further protection by putting a sock on it and use any kind of sock. Sock out of you drawer and any kind of tape any stick not to tight just put it at the top of the sock so it stays up and then my advice to you is to go ahead and leave the elizabethan collar on so he won't get this off until you get to the vet. The way that you leave the elizabethan collar is to use something you could use his collar or any type of tying material going through the little belt loops of the elizabethan collar until you could tie it around his neck nice and snug so he could not pull it off of his and then call your vet and head to the vet to get that further taken care of.

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Clipping a Dog's Broken Toenail

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