Confronting the Ick factor

Am I squeamish? Maybe. Maybe not.

I came home one night a few weeks ago, to find Dante shut out of the office. Aww! Poor Dog. Since he has no voice of his own (except for loud groans) I asked Co what was up.

"His right front paw has a split nail, and it was bleeding. I wasn't sure about cutting the nail, I thought I'd wait til you got home."

"Oh," I said, feeling confident, "I'll go cut it now."

Upon looking at said split nail, I set down the toenail clipper hastily. The bottom of the toenail had split from the top half, and had split waaayyyy down into the quick. It was still bleeding a little. Dante licked my hand holding his paw. Poor Dog! To cut off the dangling portion would still leave a split in the nail quite a ways back into the toe. Ow!

We debated. Cut it? Where? As far back as possible? Only the dangling part? I told Co I would help him, but that I didn't think I could do the cutting. For sure we'd actually be cutting into his toe, so to speak. So Co goes for the clippers, gets Dante in the tub with his paws up on the edge, and.... hesitates. He's just not sure where to cut. Dante has no clue why he is getting so much attention!

We call a vet friend, B. She says, well, actually, you've got to yank it. Take a pliers and yank it out. Ack! Co says, hey, isn't that used for torture in small countries? B says, well, yes... this is why you only have one shot at it. Take it and yank, don't be gentle. If you screw it up, you're done. I hem and haw, and ask some inane questions, and B finally says,

"I'm working tomorrow. If you don't think you can do it, bring Dante in and I'll take care of it. "

So I was off the hook. Co was totally ok with letting B take care of it! He was not about to yank out the split toenail.

But. Well. What she said made sense, she said we could use corn starch or styptic to stop the bleeding. I was confident it wouldn't hurt Dante long term. Just the short term. Alot. Come on, am I going to drive for an hour to have her do this? Really?

So I did it. Dante laid down, Co held his paw, and I took the pliers and yanked.
A brief yelp, and Dante hops up and comes over to me to apologize for whatever he had done, and then he promptly forgets about the whole thing. Gotta love that about dogs.