How to bathe your dog and trim his nails

Is your doggy dirty? Does he have long nails that click on your hardwood floors when he walks. Being dirty and having long nails can be uncomfortable for your dog. If you keep him bathed, you can actually decrease your housework because he won't be lying on everything and getting it dirty. When you bathe him, he loses a lot of that loose hair. Clipping his nails helps eliminate scratch marks on your tile and wood floors and snags on your carpets. Here's an easy way to bathe your dog and clip his nails.

:Be safe

You should use either your bathtub with a removable showerhead or a walk-in shower to bathe your dog. I put a large mat down in my tub to protect the surface and to provide a safe, non slip surface for my pooch. Make sure you bathe your dog in tempid or luke warm water. You don't want to scald, burn or freeze him.

:Wash cycle

First soak him down from head to toe with luke warm water, them apply flea shampoo. Lather him well ( he should love this part,it's just like giving him a head to toe massage!). Let the shampoo set on him for about 5-10 min. or whatever the directions say. Make sure it's lathered everywhere on you dog so the fleas cannot escape. After the required time, rinse. Start at his head and work your way to his tail. Don't forget his legs. Let him stand in the tub or shower a few minutes afterwards with the curtain closed and he will shake a couple times there. That will save you from having a boat load of water on your floor.

Drying:

After you dry him as best you can, you need to clean his ears. I know..ooops would have forgot that part. Yes it is a step that a lot of pet owners forget, but your dogs ears get dirty too. Take a wet warm washcloth and clean the insides of his ears. There, your dog is sparkling clean!

Protection:

The last step of the bath, if you do it once a month like I do, is to apply the flea protectant or give him his monthly flea pill. I use Sargeants flea oil for large dogs. I just start right behind his head and squeeze it along his back to just in front of his tail. There, now he is protected from those nasty, bothersome fleas.

OK. So your dog is now clean and protected from fleas. He can hear again because his ears are clean. Next, you need to clip his nails.

Nail care:

Now for this I do not use dog clippers, nor do I use that "as seen on TV" clipper system. I use a regular dremel tool. Yes, the dremel tool is strong enough to actually do the job, yet easy to control so you don't hurt him (that's very important).

The first time I used a dremel on my dogs nails, I had to hold him down. Now he is so used to it that he just lies down and let's me work on his nails. Once you get used to "sanding" your dogs nails with a dremel tool, it should only take you about 5 minutes to do his nails.

Basically the dremel tool is self explanatory. You just sand your dogs nail from the tip down. Be careful not to get into the pink area of the nail. This is the easiest, most pain proof way I have ever done a dogs nails. It really works great!

Once he is all done, nice and clean and has pretty, nicely cut nails, he deserves a treat. So give your dog a nice treat for enduring all that "punishment". Of course, my dog loves his bath and getting his nails clipped. He jumps right in the tub as soon as he hears the word bath. I think that if you treat this grooming session more like a petting and massage session for your dog, he too will be jumping in that tub!