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jvdb · 05-06-2010, 08:33 PM

WOW! this thread got out of hand quickly while I was away for a few days. Many of you are probably wondering exactly what happened.

1. I made an appointment with the vet to have the dewclaws removed. However the day before I decided "no, this is a relatively simple procedure and I WILL do it myself. Although I have NEVER seen the procedure done before in person I am confident enough that I can preform the procedure with minimal risk of infection due to my nursing training" (keep reading, you may disagree with this but please continue to my point at the end of this post).

2. After gathering supplies and talking through the procedure with Mommadog1 (thank you by the way). I went ahead and removed two dew claws from one of the babies. I knew that I had to cut high enough remove the entire claw so that it would not grow back. There WAS blood - but thanks to forum posts like these I knew what to do and applied a clotting agent.

3. Here is where it gets embarrassing. My little guy cried, and as much confidence I had going in, it all was lost when I saw him bleeding. Even though I was able to stop the bleeding quite easily, my heart turned to mush....I couldn't do anymore dew claws and had already canceled the vet appointment. - I wasn't about to make another appointment and have them find some of the dewclaws removed and have them ask me who did it - I was way to embarrassed to explain that to them. So here I am, one baby has his original 2 dewclaws still and the other one has 2 of his 4 removed. I do feel a little stupid.

All is healed up nicely but I still feel dumb. But here is my bottom line. I STILL agree with posting the information on here so that those of us STUBBORN enough to attempt to learn online will at least do so as safely as possible. Do I feel stupid for making the decision to attempt to do them myself? YES. But I know that I probably would have done it regardless of whether mommadog1 had walked me through it or not. We might as well post as much information as possible to at least ensure that others like me can preform the procedure as safely as possible because lets face many of us think we can do anything (myself included) and will do it regardless.

05-06-2010, 08:33 PM	#75
jvdb Senior Yorkie Talker Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Canada Posts: 99	WOW! this thread got out of hand quickly while I was away for a few days. Many of you are probably wondering exactly what happened. 1. I made an appointment with the vet to have the dewclaws removed. However the day before I decided "no, this is a relatively simple procedure and I WILL do it myself. Although I have NEVER seen the procedure done before in person I am confident enough that I can preform the procedure with minimal risk of infection due to my nursing training" (keep reading, you may disagree with this but please continue to my point at the end of this post). 2. After gathering supplies and talking through the procedure with Mommadog1 (thank you by the way). I went ahead and removed two dew claws from one of the babies. I knew that I had to cut high enough remove the entire claw so that it would not grow back. There WAS blood - but thanks to forum posts like these I knew what to do and applied a clotting agent. 3. Here is where it gets embarrassing. My little guy cried, and as much confidence I had going in, it all was lost when I saw him bleeding. Even though I was able to stop the bleeding quite easily, my heart turned to mush....I couldn't do anymore dew claws and had already canceled the vet appointment. - I wasn't about to make another appointment and have them find some of the dewclaws removed and have them ask me who did it - I was way to embarrassed to explain that to them. So here I am, one baby has his original 2 dewclaws still and the other one has 2 of his 4 removed. I do feel a little stupid. All is healed up nicely but I still feel dumb. But here is my bottom line. I STILL agree with posting the information on here so that those of us STUBBORN enough to attempt to learn online will at least do so as safely as possible. Do I feel stupid for making the decision to attempt to do them myself? YES. But I know that I probably would have done it regardless of whether mommadog1 had walked me through it or not. We might as well post as much information as possible to at least ensure that others like me can preform the procedure as safely as possible because lets face many of us think we can do anything (myself included) and will do it regardless.