German Shepherd Handling Training

We never set out to be known as the “nail trimming” people, but it is important and we do a lot of dog nails so it has gained a lot of interest from people who follow us and work with us.
Everyone always comments and asks about how we get the dogs to be so good for when we do their nails in our pictures and videos.
It is not magic, it is a LOT of hard work and repetitions to teach the dogs how we want them to be.
Granger showing some of the steps we teach the dogs in our board and train program about yielding to pressure and relaxing body parts for learning to be calm with handling and nail trims.
It is a very step by step process where if one part is not “great” it can be hard to move forward to the next so we really encourage taking time to get it all in place before actually DOING your pups nails.
Although we will as needed correct the dogs for some behaviors (hard mouthing / biting, etc), a majority of what we teach to get the final result is simple pressure / release to relax and yield body parts and allow us to touch their feet, legs and all over after laying them down.
In many cases, by the time we actually get to the dogs nails for trimming after all of the work done prior it goes extremely well (even with dogs who previously needed muzzle or sedation for nail care).
The calmer the dog, the easier everything else that follows will be to accomplish!