Cookie tore her dewclaw trying to climb over the fence

She only tries to get over the fence if one of us is out front with the other dogs. I always lock her inside the house if I am doing something with one of the others, but my husband forgot. He was throwing bumpers for the others and she wanted a chance.

We didn’t realize she’d hurt herself (I came home right after it happened) at first until we noticed blood everywhere!

Took her to the vet to get it cleaned up and they said she’d torn the entire nail off, so they bandaged it up, put her on antibiotics and a few days of Rimadyl.

Poor baby! She is our 6th dog with intact dewclaws and our first injury, although I know they are not uncommon.

Ouch!

Aww poor Cookie.

Those freak toe nail accidents stink. Grizzly got a toe nail stuck in his wire crate in all the excitement to get let out. Broke all the way down at the toe itself. ICK!!!

Poor Cookie! Long, long ago we had a Dalmatian who somehow (we never figured out how) tore a dew claw. Went through a lot to try to get it to heal only to have to have it taken completely off.

Sending healing thoughts.

Poor Cookie! My corgi has torn both dew claws quite a few times. I really want to get them removed but I read stories that its hard to recover from the removal when they are adults so I just make sure to keep them very short.

Oh, ouch. A friend of mine's black girl had dangling dewclaws and the vet told her that once an injury occurs, that claw is more prone to subsequent injuries. I don't know if that applied only to danglers or in general. So far, none of my dogs with dewclaws have ever had a problem.

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Originally Posted by SunDance

Oh, ouch. A friend of mine's black girl had dangling dewclaws and the vet told her that once an injury occurs, that claw is more prone to subsequent injuries. I don't know if that applied only to danglers or in general. So far, none of my dogs with dewclaws have ever had a problem.

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True story. One of my pup owners w/ an older lab not purchased from me had terrible issues w/ hers. She ripped the one at my house simply by stepping over her leash when on a tie out while we were doing rally / obed here. They had them removed, but it was ~3 mos for total recovery it seemed. And the quote from our reg vet was $560!

Two dumb questions:

Are the dewclaws required for showing, i.e. are points deducted if the dog does not have them?

If they are required, OK but for all the other dogs why are they not removed when the puppy is only 2-3 days old as I think the nerves and structure are not fully formed yet.

When I was growing up we had boxers and the breeders would just snip them off at day 2, both for the show dogs and obedience dogs. Granted that was 55 plus years ago and I guess times change.

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Originally Posted by Blackboy98

Two dumb questions:

Are the dewclaws required for showing, i.e. are points deducted if the dog does not have them?

If they are required, OK but for all the other dogs why are they not removed when the puppy is only 2-3 days old as I think the nerves and structure are not fully formed yet.

When I was growing up we had boxers and the breeders would just snip them off at day 2, both for the show dogs and obedience dogs. Granted that was 55 plus years ago and I guess times change.

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No, they’re not required and many breeders, especially field ones do remove them shortly after birth. The breeder of my original Labs, told me she didn’t because it is essentially amputating a toe, and even though they are babies with supposedly immature nervous systems she felt that it was painful for them, so stopped doing it. Because she didn’t do it, I got used to having dogs with intact dewclaws, and I have seen them use them almost as thumbs to help hold bones still for chewing etc., although I am sure they can function fine without them. All my dogs have either come from her or from people she mentored which is why none of us removed the dew claws. As I said in my original post, this is the first injury we’ve had, so I don’t think they are as problematic as some people make them out to be, and I prefer leaving my dogs the way they were born - I don’t think I would dock tails or crop ears if I had a breed that is traditionally done in, either.