How to Choose the Best Tool for Dog Nail Grooming: Clippers vs Grinders
Author Robert Herrera Reading 1 min Published by
Dog owners know pretty well that canines need more than just eating, drinking, and walking. If you are going to become a loving dog parent, you should be prepared to the need for regular deworming, training, and grooming. Dog grooming includes washing, combing, and nail trimming. To trim the nails quickly and painlessly one needs to have some skills, a lot of patience, and special tools: scissors, pliers or a grinder. Depending on the tool used, the procedure of nail trimming will be referred to as clipping or grinding. But which tool is better? Let’s try to find it out together.
Table of Contents:
What is Dog Nail Clipping?
What is Dog Nail Clipping?
Nail Clippers or a Nail Grinder: What to Choose?
The Bottom Line
To put it simply, clipping is when you physically cut off a piece of nail, using sharp blades. A tool that is used for clipping can be called differently – clippers, scissors or pliers, but its mechanism of action is always one and the same. A nail is placed between the blades; after that, you quickly press the handles to make the blades meet in order to cut the nail off.
A sub-type of nail clippers is a guillotine, where a nail is placed inside a small hole in the instrument’s head and cut off with sharp blades. It is safer than usual clippers. Due to the small hole diameter, it suits for small and medium-sized breeds best.
Clipping, as a traditional method of nail trimming, has its own advantages and disadvantages. It is widely used in combination with grinding or alone. At the same time, it is associated with some risks.
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To sum it up, you need to have some skills to cut dog nails with clippers quickly and effectively. The clippers must be sharp and strong. As for your pup, it should be well-trained because it must sit still during the procedure.
Grinding is a gentle and gradual removing of the nail’s surface with a rotating abrasive disk. It has the same mechanism of action as a usual nail file. The tool that is used for grinding is called a grinder. It is powered by batteries or electricity. The best dog nail grinder tools can work up to 3-4 hours on a single charge.
Nowadays, many dog owners opt for nail grinding instead of clipping. This method has a reduced impact on the nail structure and has some other important advantages. At the same time, it is not completely flawless.
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Opinions differ, as each tool has its strong and weak points. It’s for you to decide what instruments to use to groom your pup. Some dog owners, for example, practice a complex approach. They cut long nails with clippers or a guillotine, and then give them the needed shape by grinding. This approach saves time and allows to get the best results without much effort.
You may want to opt for clippers if your pup doesn’t like the buzzing sound of a grinder or it is scared with it. Also, this method suits for the pets with healthy nails, which don’t crack when you cut them.
Grinding is a great solution for the owners of dogs with thin or sensitive nails, which tend to break up easily. Also, a grinder can be used by everyone who wants to his pup have neat smooth nails of a beautiful shape.
Nail care is an important part of pet grooming. If the claws of your dog touch the floor when it walks it’s high time to think of nail trimming. There are several types of tools for nail cutting available; the most popular of them are clippers and grinders. We hope our recommendations will help you to make the right choice of a trimming tool.