Black Velvet
Trimming Velvet’s Claws
Velvet’s life as a show dog was about adhering to rules, including a rule dictating the length of her claws. Between shows her claws would grow out, only to be cut back once again to regulation length. Necessary perhaps, but also painful and frightening for a little dog; 18* bleeding claws will do that.
By the time we adopted Velvet at the age of 2½, her fear of claw trimming was deeply engrained, and overrode any developing trust she had in me. Monthly trims became snarling, squirming sessions, that left everyone exhausted, and usually me scratched or bitten. One day, I decided we needed a timeout. So I switched to trimming only one claw per day. Our sessions were suddenly much shorter, Velvet was rewarded more frequently (a cookie every day) and I had fewer scratches. Years later she’s still nervous, but at least now she can tolerate all 18 claws being trimmed in one session.
Preserving Fancy’s Confidence
Timeouts improved Velvet’s ability to cope with a challenging situation. It seemed logical that the concept would work just as well with a horse. And now in hindsight, I think timeouts played a significant role in building Fancy’s overall confidence.
As a recent example, timeouts became an important component when training Fancy to become confident with mounting. In the beginning, I gave her a timeout every time I dismounted, simply by going for a walk around the arena. Of course, this meant that our timeouts were actually longer than the actual mounting exercise. But as Fancy’s confidence grew the timeouts became shorter, until they were phased out completely for that task.
I look at it as managing my expectations, in order to preserve Fancy’s confidence for tomorrow.
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