This week marks a bunch of firsts for Mister Zoltan. It is his first vacation with our family, his first 4th of July and the first time in over a month I have been able to trim all of his nails without him having a meltdown!! Yayyyy Zoltan!!! :)
First things first. Vacation!! We have a not so fancy trailer at the beach in Fenwick Island, DE. It's a smidge cramped with 3 adults and 4 pups but it is our place and we love it. We stay down for a whole week in July and just relax and do whatever we please. We don't have a fenced in yard at the beach place so everyone has to go potty on a leash or on a longer cable "tie out" if we humans are outside to supervise. 2 out of our 3 girls have some not so nice leash manners and then of course Zoltan kind of has to have nice leash manners so I try to take him for at least 2 walks a day even when we are at the beach place. It's hard down here since there are no sidewalks (just asphalt) so we have to go early in the morning and in the evening so nobody gets their footsies hurt!
Next up, on Wednesday Zoltan celebrated his very first 4th of July! He wasn't even phased by fireworks, cracks and pops throughout the day and in the evening when the big shows put on by the town were making all kinds of boom noises he just laid on the floor and slept. He was tired and I'm glad the noises didn't bother him. On the other hand our boxer mix Penny has an aversion to loud noises of any kind and she spend the evening curled up on the bed buried between some pillows. I gave her a bone with some peanut butter but she wanted no parts of it.
The third (and possibly most important) "first" of the week was that Zoltan let me trim his nails!! He has had serious issues with us trimming his nails almost since we brought him home at 11 weeks old. He would always squirm and try to nibble on our hands or he would whine, cry and bark. It would take forever (I'm talking over several days) to get all nails on all four paws trimmed. A little over a month ago I accidentally hit the quick on one of his nails (which I think was more traumatic for me) but after that he would literally FREAK OUT when I even came near him with nail clippers. He would run and hide under the dining room table. If I was lucky enough to lure him out with some food, his ears were pinned back and his tail was usually tucked under too. My poor boy was scared but I knew I couldn't give into his fear and so we plodded along on our nail trimming journey.
So began what I like to call the "OMG! Nail trimming is so fun!!!" experiment. Two or Three times a day I would take some super yummy tasty turkey or ham and I would break a piece up. Then, I would take out the nail trimming supplies and sit them about 5 or 6 feet away from us. Each time Zoltan let me touch or hold his paw I marked it with a "good!" and then gave him a tasty treat. Slowly we moved the nail supplies closer and closer until I was touching his paws with the clippers while holding them. Again we marked with a "good!" and then he got a tasty treat. A few weeks ago we moved up to trimming a tiny bit of a nail before releasing him to go have fun and then Wednesday and Thursday I was able to trim all of his nails on all four paws!!! I was so excited. We still have some work to do and we need to keep it positive but I'm hoping that he doesn't freak out anymore and we can keep those nails nice and short!
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