Sometimes even the simplest things can be brutally painful. Ever ripped a toenail? Yow, that hurts! Same goes for pet claws (toenails to you). They limp. They lick. They invariably make a big deal out of this seemingly miniscule injury…because it hurts like hell.

Sure, keeping your pets’ claws to a minimum length is helpful in preventing such disasters—as is the removal of dewclaws in dogs. After all, one less thing to break always improves your odds (not that I’m advocating dewclaw-ectomies with this post).

But some pets just have problematic claws. They crack easily, they rip readily, they’re impossible to keep minimally short, or the dog attached is just plain active. Whatever the cause, the result is a nasty-looking bloody pulp under a cracked claw sheath. It never fails to elicit my wince. Ouch!

My own dog is a ideal example of claw imperfection: By the time I adopted Sophie Sue, her claws were out to there. Ever since, there’s no getting them back in line without stressful, serial dremeling (using a Dremel drill with a grinding wheel)—she hates it! She screams bloody murder in her pitiful Frenchie voice. Wimp that I am, I can’t stand to even be in the hospital when her toenails get attended to. (For the record, dremeling is no more painful than clipping. She actually screams louder when the trimmers are used.)

Luckily, Sophie Sue is a couch potato. Otherwise, her claws would surely get a beating. While activity might help to keep the claws filed down somewhat more than they are, it no doubt increases their risk of getting caught and torn.

Should one ever tear in a painful way (some actually break slowly sans pulpy mess) I’d certainly handle it the way I offer most of my clients: sedation with a local (or full anesthesia for wild ones) then a swift clip to the base of the claw (double-ouch!). A dose of an analgesic and a light wrap (with or without E-collar) usually completes the cure. Antibiotics are usually overkill, though persistent licking (if clients have waited days before the visit) sometimes renders their use a must.

But not everyone wants to (or can) pay $150-$200 to deal with a claw fracture. Just clip it, Doc, that’s what the other vets have done in the past. After explaining that the pain will be significant (if the whole pulp is freshly exposed) I’ll often acquiesce and give a local only, adding twenty bucks to their bill but getting them out the door for well under $100.

Oh, and one more thing: the blood. In fact, that’s what occasioned this post. My last claw fracture patient was a small dog with a two day-old injury. It didn’t look like it would hurt much—or bleed (when they’re fresh they bleed quite a bit but when they’re old, the exposed nerve and vessel start to die away).

But when I took my clipper to it (after asking the client if she minded watching the procedure), my new tech’s understanding of the need for tourniquet-style pressure (just in case it wants to bleed a lot) seemed to escape her. Though I had a gauze sponge at the ready, I was too slow. Laurel and Hardy at work. The blood spurted as if I’d cut a big fresh skin vessel. It wasn’t pretty. The client had to jump out of the way to (mostly) avoid the spray.

Never before had I seen a fractured toenail’s resolution so dramatically devolve into chaos. With Murphy’s Law in full effect, of course it had to happen with the owner present. Who knew a twenty-pound Puggle’s claw could bleed so ferociously?

Whenever a tech (or I) overclip a toenail, I always like to say, “Don’t worry…It’s a long way from the heart.” This time, though, it didn’t sound so convincing. Oh well. Next time I’ll be better prepared. I guess that’s what they mean by “practice.”