How do I trim my dog's nails at home?

Pick a calm moment, ideally after a walk when your dog is a little tired, and trim on a non slip surface so your dog does not have to work at staying balanced. Guillotine style clippers work well for small to medium nails, while scissor style clippers give more control on thick or curved nails.

Hold the paw with your thumb on top and finger underneath the pad, and trim one small slice at a time rather than aiming for the finished length in a single cut. On light colored nails you can usually see the quick as a pink line inside the nail and should stop about 2 mm before it; on dark nails, trim in 1 mm increments and stop as soon as you see a grey or pinkish dot appear in the center of the cut surface, a sign the quick is close.

Doing four or five nails, giving a treat, then pausing works better than trying to finish all four paws in one sitting, especially with a dog that is new to trims. If your dog pulls away repeatedly or growls, stop for the day rather than pushing through, since a bad experience now makes the next session harder.

New trimmers often angle the clipper blade parallel to the nail's tip instead of following the natural curve underneath, which increases the odds of pinching or crushing the nail rather than slicing cleanly through it. Angling the blade so it follows the slight downward curve of the nail, roughly matching the angle the nail naturally grows at, produces a cleaner cut and a more comfortable result for your dog, even on the very first attempt.

If your dog has particularly thick nails, common in larger breeds, a scissor style clipper generally cuts through more cleanly in one motion than a guillotine style, which can require more squeezing force and sometimes crushes rather than slices a very thick nail on the first attempt.