When I first got Anu, I didn’t have much experience with nail trimming. As a result of a few misplaced snippings, Anu developed a negative association with the nail clipper.
Ever since he would struggle out of my lap every time he sensed the nail clipper coming near, this made it extremely difficult to trim his nails. To complicate things further, some of his nails are black, which makes it even more difficult to see where the quick is.
The quick is basically the soft cuticle within a dog’s nail (the pinkish part in the above picture), it’s very sensitive and your dog will feel uncomfortable (or pain) when it comes in contact with something like a clipper or even a grinder. Because it contains blood vessels, if you accidentally clip it, it’ll start bleeding.
Trimming Black Nails
Based on the above diagram, my previous experience was clipping beyond the ‘cut line’ and exposing the quick, which caused discomfort and bleeding. And using a clipper became more and more difficult with Anu as he would struggle as if his life depended on it.
It was obviously more challenging to trim a black nail because now you can’t see where the quick begins behind all those dark fibres of a nail.
Hence the natural solution was to get a grinder. Nail grinders are a lot more forgiving, in the sense that you’re taking down the nails gradually without the risk of over-clipping when you’re “going for the kill“.
You could still over-grind and expose the quick. But with the grinder, because it’s a gradual process, you can feel when you’re getting close to exposing the quick when the texture around it (the hard part) starts to feel softer.
Yes, you can feel that it’s significantly softer than the harder part of the shell. This way, even if it’s a black nail, you can still trim it with relative ease without hurting your dog, physically and psychologically.
The other thing I found out about black nails is that you can actually grind off the black surface a little to review a clearer surface underneath. This then allows you to see the quick easier when using a nail clipper. Though I’m not entirely sure if this is true with all black nails or just in some cases.
If you happen to have a nail filer at home, you can give it a try by filing on the outer surface of the black nails and see if it reviews a clearer surface like in the picture above. This would help tremendously with seeing the quick and prevent any over-clipping of the nails.
Choosing a Nail Grinder
The first grinder I bought was the model MB-011 by the brand Urban. It’s a grinder more suited for smaller dogs and softer nails. Generally speaking, it’s an ok grinder for filing off rough edges after clipping but it lacks power and would prove to be difficult to grind down harder nails.
Some of Anu’s nails are soft enough to grind with the MB-011, but some are quite hard and the rotation would stop if I press a little harder against the nail. This is probably due to the dulling of the grinding surface but since the grinder wheel is not replaceable, I can only buy a new grinder altogether.
So we decided to get another one, the Casfuy 6-Speed Dog Nail Grinder.
When looking for a new grinder, I wanted to base it on the specification of the MB-011 and get something that has a higher rpm. However, there wasn’t much information to go by apart from that it’s about 91g in weight, and produces a 55dB sound.
So we just relied on the feedback on Amazon, took a chance with the Casfuy and prevailed.
The Casfuy 6-Speed Dog Nail Grinder comes with a 6-speed power selector, 1 being the most gentle, and 6 being the most powerful with a higher rpm. And unlike the MB-011, the grinder wheel on the Casfuy is replaceable.
In comparison with the MB-011, speed 1 of the Casfuy 6-Speed Dog Nail Grinder was more than enough to do a decent job at grinding Anu’s nails. Given his size as a Wire Fox Terrier, I would assume the rest of the speed from 2 to 6 would be adequate to handle the job for at least a medium-sized dog.
Another handy feature of the Casfuy 6-Speed Dog Nail Grinder is that it comes with 2 LED lights on opposing of the unit, providing backlighting during grinding, allowing the quicks to be much more visible on white nails, or on black nails when the black surfaces have been filed off in my case.
Nail Grinder’s RPMs and Sound
As mentioned before, the MB-011 claims that it produces a 55dB sound/noise level, but there was no reference to its RPM speed. While the Casfuy claims that it has a power range of 7000RPM to 12000 RPM, and produces a sound/noise level of 45dB, I do feel that it actually sounded louder than the MB-011.
But with that being said, the sounds/noise from both grinders didn’t seem to cause any issues during usage. Below are the actual recorded footage of how they sound in comparison with each other, and the different sound/noise the Casfuy produces at different speeds from 1 through 6.
Conclusion
To be honest, I find using a nail clipper very stressful. Even though they’re a lot less time-consuming, but with Anu having had some prior bad experiences with a clipper, using a nail grinder for trimming really does make the job a lot more manageable.
For owners whose dogs has black nails, I suggest that you first try using a nail file to see if you can remove the colour from the surface of the nails. If it works, then clipping a black nail will become a lot easier and you don’t necessarily need to buy a nail grinder.
For those who share the same experience as me, then using a nail grinder could be a life saver and it greatly reduces the risk of trimming too deep and causing unnecessary drama.
