# Nail cauterizing issue.



## BullysAdvocate (Jan 30, 2014)

I got my pitbull when she was 2 years old; her nails had never been cut (or so it seemed) and the quick had overgrown. I would constantly take her in to trim what little they could, and even tried filing them, with little success. She is a chronic cancer doggie, and has had surgery for two different types about 4 times. She went under again about a month and a half ago, and while she was under I finally opted to get her nails cauterized. They looked GREAT. However, the nail has already grown back to the point they were at before, maybe even worse. When she was in for a recheck two weeks ago, I asked the vet to trim them down. They took her to the back room, but when she came back it was apparent that nothing had been done. I shrugged it off and decided to take her to work (Petco) and let the groomers do it; since she's more comfortable there. Today I found my nail clippers, and tried to take off the very tip of one nail. Tanya cried like a banshee, and none of the nail even got taken off. Instead, milky blood and clear fluid seeped from the still fully intact nail. No need to say this, but I called the vet and she's going in tomorrow for a check. 

Has anyone experienced this, or does anyone know what the heck happened to her feet? I waited a while so they could heal before even attempting to cut them back again... My poor baby must be in so much pain.


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## spotted nikes (Feb 7, 2008)

Shouldn't be milky blood. When you quick one, it is bright red blood. Sounds like an infected nail with pus in it. Which would be very painful. Definitely get a vet to check it.


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## Kayota (Aug 14, 2009)

spotted nikes said:


> Shouldn't be milky blood. When you quick one, it is bright red blood. Sounds like an infected nail with pus in it. Which would be very painful. Definitely get a vet to check it.


it doesn't seep either really, roxie has it EVERYWHERE in seconds when i quick her.


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## BullysAdvocate (Jan 30, 2014)

Yeah it was nowhere near the cauterized quick. It seeped because I couldn't even get any part of the nail off , so it oozed from the center of it.  so normally after they're cauterized you should be able to trim them a month after the procedure without this happening? 

I'm really upset at the vet that did this. This wasn't their only mistake... And what peeves me even more is that the technicians had to have known 2 weeks ago. They took her back for the nail trim and returned her to me without doing it. As for an infection, she was on antibiotics (cephalexin) before her surgery for a skin infection, and after the surgery for broken teeth. I have some pain meds left over for when she broke her teeth at the vets office, so I'll give her some when I get out of class this evening. 

Should I wait before I start her on the antibiotics? She sees the vet tomorrow at 2.


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## spotted nikes (Feb 7, 2008)

BullysAdvocate said:


> Yeah it was nowhere near the cauterized quick. It seeped because I couldn't even get any part of the nail off , so it oozed from the center of it.  so normally after they're cauterized you should be able to trim them a month after the procedure without this happening?
> 
> I'm really upset at the vet that did this. This wasn't their only mistake... And what peeves me even more is that the technicians had to have known 2 weeks ago. They took her back for the nail trim and returned her to me without doing it. As for an infection, she was on antibiotics (cephalexin) before her surgery for a skin infection, and after the surgery for broken teeth. I have some pain meds left over for when she broke her teeth at the vets office, so I'll give her some when I get out of class this evening.
> 
> Should I wait before I start her on the antibiotics? She sees the vet tomorrow at 2.


I'd wait on the antibiotics. See the vet tomorrow and see what they recommend.


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## BullysAdvocate (Jan 30, 2014)

D: they're putting her on antibiotics and pain pills, and cutting her nails back anyways. That's gotta hurt so bad. He said that the nails are hallow and that they need to be able to drain out and that if they're not cut back they could split through the quick.


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## [email protected] (Nov 18, 2013)

Yikes! I don't often go on a serious, arm-waving rant, but I'm going to do it now: There are a few HUGE red flags going on here:
1) Cutting nails "to the quick" and cauterizing them is incredibly painful, even when done under anesthesia! These dogs are so painful when they wake up, and often for weeks afterwards. I would defy anyone who says otherwise to have this done to themselves. No vet should ever do this! (Caveat: There are a handful of rare dermatological problems where removing the nails is a medical necessity, but that is a very different issue.) 
2) Nails are not hollow--they are composed of a blood/nerve-filled "quick" closely covered by the horny shell. They should never have a need to drain and there should never be any space within the nail needing drainage. If they are "draining" they are very likely to be infected, as has been pointed out elsewhere. Infected nails have a very high probability of extending up into the bone of the toes ("osteomyelitis") which can be a devastating problem. I would hope/assume that your vet did a cytology (exam of the fluid under a microscope) to confirm infection. If so, I would highly encourage you to have this fluid cultured, since it would be critical to stop this process as soon as possible.
3) If I am following the timeline of your story, the "clip and cauterize" must have occurred quite some time previously, since " the nail has already grown back to the point they were at before" (that would normally take several months after an aggressive clipping). So the current problem may not be related to the previous treatment. Again, back to the need for a cytology and culture as described above to confirm what is actually going on.  If this is some process other than an infection, a referral to a veterinary dermatologist is in order...as quicly as possible.


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## winniec777 (Apr 20, 2008)

[email protected] said:


> Yikes! I don't often go on a serious, arm-waving rant, but I'm going to do it now: There are a few HUGE red flags going on here:
> 1) Cutting nails "to the quick" and cauterizing them is incredibly painful, even when done under anesthesia! These dogs are so painful when they wake up, and often for weeks afterwards. I would defy anyone who says otherwise to have this done to themselves. No vet should ever do this! (Caveat: There are a handful of rare dermatological problems where removing the nails is a medical necessity, but that is a very different issue.)
> 2) Nails are not hollow--they are composed of a blood/nerve-filled "quick" closely covered by the horny shell. They should never have a need to drain and there should never be any space within the nail needing drainage. If they are "draining" they are very likely to be infected, as has been pointed out elsewhere. Infected nails have a very high probability of extending up into the bone of the toes ("osteomyelitis") which can be a devastating problem. I would hope/assume that your vet did a cytology (exam of the fluid under a microscope) to confirm infection. If so, I would highly encourage you to have this fluid cultured, since it would be critical to stop this process as soon as possible.
> 3) If I am following the timeline of your story, the "clip and cauterize" must have occurred quite some time previously, since " the nail has already grown back to the point they were at before" (that would normally take several months after an aggressive clipping). So the current problem may not be related to the previous treatment. Again, back to the need for a cytology and culture as described above to confirm what is actually going on. If this is some process other than an infection, a referral to a veterinary dermatologist is in order...as quicly as possible.


Thanks for your input. I don't know why some vets think cutting the quick is no big deal. Our dog was under recently for xrays and dental check. The vet was going to trim her nails, quicking them if they thought they "needed" it (not my regular vet - the other one in the office who does cleanings). I told her not to. She said, "Why not? It's free when they're under." As if being free is the only criterion. I told her I snip & dremel my dog's nails and that I didn't want her to face extra trauma from an office trimming. She was already stressed out from the visit and would likely face pain from being positioned for xrays (she has arthritis in her spine) and from the dental cleaning. I didn't want to add to that. She looked at me like I had two heads. How can you be a vet and have no empathy for your patients?? Fortunately my regular vet cares as much about the animal's state of mind as well as physical health or I would be finding another vet.


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## [email protected] (Nov 18, 2013)

winniec777, good for you for your intelligence and for being a patient advocate! I am appalled that some vets still perform this procedure at all. We are in a very strange placed as a profession right now, in relation to pain control. Some vets (and groups such as the American Animal Hospital Association) have taken a strong stand to advocate for better pain control. Formal standards have been established, although they are (unfortunately) not mandatory. On the other hand, some vets are still actively causing unnecessary agony and many are still not treating for even significant post-surgical pain. In some places what this vet did would be considered malpractice and in others it would be fully acceptable.


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## Kayota (Aug 14, 2009)

roxie has a permanent fear of the vet and nail clipping because the first time i took her they quicked all her nails with no anesthesia while she screamed. and i mean complete terror, has to be anesthetized at the vet.

i have a somewhat irrelevant question while we are here and on the topic of unnecessary pain: when i was a vet tech student i watched them remove horns on both goats and cattle with only apparently ineffective local anesthetic as the animals screamed. they told me that its impractical to put farm animals under even in the case of goats and that the animals didnt feel anything, they were just being dramatic. afterward they gave no painkillers. horns are connected to the sinuses in these animals and this procedure causes them to be open to infection for quite a while but no antibiotics were given either. what do you think about all this? am i right to think this is cruel?


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## Kyllobernese (Feb 5, 2008)

Any time I have a dog under anesthetic, like Kris' spay, they always trim their nails but never to the quick. Because the dog is not moving around, they can take them down a lot closer than you can when they are squirming around without even hitting the quick. I have never had any of them sore on their feet afterwards, then it is just a case of me keeping them that short.


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## Emmett (Feb 9, 2013)

Emmett had this done (drastic cutback/quicking and cauterization under anesthetic) about 4 months after he was dumped. While it is definitely a procedure of last resort I have to respectfully disagree that "only in rare dermatological conditions" should it be considered. Emmett came to me in a very neglected state that involved seriously overgrown nails. They had been allowed to be overgrown for such a prolonged length of time that they had seriously affected his "alignment" and considering that he has severely arthritic elbows they were causing him a significant about of skeletal pain. It was just painful to watch him stand, yet alone take a few steps. 

We started him on pain meds and anti-inflammatories and also began an aggressive protocol to bring his nails back under control. We went *weekly* for dremmeling sessions (he hated them, often needing sedation) and simply could not get his quicks to recede. Even with good nutrition his nails simply grow too slowly to see progress, the structural changes meant that we couldn't really wear them down naturally. So, we went in and took drastic measures. My vet was aggressive with pain management leading up to and after the surgery, but the truth is he felt better when he could finally stand normally. So, IMO there are times when it can be the _best_ option and I think it is going too far to say that only in the rarest of rare circumstances should it be considered.

To the OP, I am sorry that this happened and I would personally be pursuing a consultation with another vet. I know that is easier said than done, but if you are suspicious that they were aware of a problem (when he went in for a trim and you noticed they really didn't do anything) and didn't inform you, it's time to seek answers elsewhere. It may be that this is not related, but it seems you've lost trust in your vet and that will make it hard to work closely with them and their staff.


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## [email protected] (Nov 18, 2013)

Kayota, your question is a very interesting, and very controversial one. Pain has historically been massively under-treated in this profession. While this is true with cats and dogs it is much, much more so in large animal medicine where convenience and cost become the driving factors (less so with horses, which are often valuable and have very dedicated owners). Procedures are still routinely performed on food animal species which would be considered overtly "cruel" if they weren't a part of traditional husbandry procedures. (Many state Veterinary Practice Acts specifically exempt veterinary medicine from the normal cruelty standards). So, yes, in my opinion what you are describing is cruel whether we want to recognize it as such or not. It has been definitively shown that the nervous system of all mammals is nearly identical to our own, thus they "feel" every bit as much pain as we do. What many species don't do is show pain in a way that we recognize it. Scientifically things such as hot-iron branding, dehorning, castration without anesthesia, and debeaking of birds are clearly cruel, and have been recognized as such in much of Europe already. Here in the U.S. it may be a long time before we examine and act on these issues.

Emmett, I recognize what you are saying. However, you are describing a very specific medical problem, and one where you balanced one set of medical issues (arthritis, difficulty walking, possible pain from joints that cannot function correctly) with another (pain from the procedure). That isn't really what we are talking about in this thread. Specifically I took a stand against convenience "nails to the quick" when there certainly were better options. (Read winniec777's comments above and realize just how casually a vet passed off this procedure as being "necessary" when clearly it was not, and made no mention of just how painful it would be!)
I note also that you mentioned that you tried multiple other means of dealing with the problem, and resorted to having the nails cut/cauterized when the other methods failed. You also mentioned that your vet was aggressive in managing pain. So...I stand by my statement. You have described a very rare situation with your own pet. There are rare situations where this should be done for medical reasons. I see about 4000 cases a year, and I might see one every 1-2 years where I think that I could medically justify doing an anesthetized cut/cautery procedure.
But...what you are describing is also a very slippery slope. Probably 90% of the dogs that I see HATE to have their nails trimmed, mostly because many owners won't take the time to train them properly in this regard. As the pets get older many of them become very difficult to trim. Also, many older pets are arthritic. So you could make an argument that many older pets in any practice would benefit from the type of aggressive clip/cauterize procedure that we are discussing. I vehemently disagree with this. Probably once per month I refuse to do this to a pet, and many of those owners go somewhere else and find another vet who has no problem with the procedure. If all owners were like you, I would have a lot more confidence that they had exhausted all other options and that "cutting them to the quick" really was in the pet's best interest. 
I also measure this issue against the "would I do it to myself" standard. Imagine that you are your dog and you have the problems that you are describing (arthritis, difficulty walking, psychological distress from having nails trimmed) but you know that there is a very painful procedure that can temporarily resolve your problems. Would you do this on yourself? If the answer is clearly yes, then you have passed one important test in deciding if it is appropriate for your pet. However in my opinion, very few of the owners with whom I discuss this issue want to recognize just how painful this procedure is--they want a convenient way to make a problem go away.


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## Emmett (Feb 9, 2013)

[email protected] said:


> Emmett, I recognize what you are saying. However, you are describing a very specific medical problem, and one where you balanced one set of medical issues (arthritis, difficulty walking, possible pain from joints that cannot function correctly) with another (pain from the procedure). That isn't really what we are talking about in this thread. Specifically I took a stand against convenience "nails to the quick" when there certainly were better options. (Read winniec777's comments above and realize just how casually a vet passed off this procedure as being "necessary" when clearly it was not, and made no mention of just how painful it would be!)
> I note also that you mentioned that you tried multiple other means of dealing with the problem, and resorted to having the nails cut/cauterized when the other methods failed. You also mentioned that your vet was aggressive in managing pain. So...I stand by my statement. You have described a very rare situation with your own pet. There are rare situations where this should be done for medical reasons. I see about 4000 cases a year, and I might see one every 1-2 years where I think that I could medically justify doing an anesthetized cut/cautery procedure.
> But...what you are describing is also a very slippery slope. Probably 90% of the dogs that I see HATE to have their nails trimmed, mostly because many owners won't take the time to train them properly in this regard. As the pets get older many of them become very difficult to trim. Also, many older pets are arthritic. So you could make an argument that many older pets in any practice would benefit from the type of aggressive clip/cauterize procedure that we are discussing. I vehemently disagree with this. Probably once per month I refuse to do this to a pet, and many of those owners go somewhere else and find another vet who has no problem with the procedure. If all owners were like you, I would have a lot more confidence that they had exhausted all other options and that "cutting them to the quick" really was in the pet's best interest.
> I also measure this issue against the "would I do it to myself" standard. Imagine that you are your dog and you have the problems that you are describing (arthritis, difficulty walking, psychological distress from having nails trimmed) but you know that there is a very painful procedure that can temporarily resolve your problems. Would you do this on yourself? If the answer is clearly yes, then you have passed one important test in deciding if it is appropriate for your pet. However in my opinion, very few of the owners with whom I discuss this issue want to recognize just how painful this procedure is--they want a convenient way to make a problem go away.


I wholeheartedly agree that many vets (and owners) take this procedure far too lightly and do not appreciate the severe pain that it can inflict, and my own vet made darn sure we had exhausted all other reasonable options before resorting to it, but I was responding to this quote:


[email protected] said:


> No vet should ever do this! (Caveat: There are a handful of rare dermatological problems where removing the nails is a medical necessity, but that is a very different issue.)


Which pretty clearly doesn't make exceptions for this procedure beyond "rare dermatological problems". There are many people who come across this forum and may take what you said at face value and not read between the lines. Obviously it is impossible to spell out the minutia of when and if this procedure is acceptable, but it is important to put it out there that there ARE times when it is the _best_ option to address a specific ailment to a specific individual. It should not be done wholesale, nor should it be "routine" to do it anytime a dog goes under anesthesia (I most certainly did read Winnie's post), but it has it's place in veterinary medicine.


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## BullysAdvocate (Jan 30, 2014)

My dog is now 10 years old-- I've been combating her nail issue for years. Even with a regime from our groomer, there's been little success. And this was not a quick fix; my dog has been under anesthesia 4 times in the last 3 years to have cancerous tumors removed, and this was the first time is even strongly considered the option. It'd been getting harder for her to get around, due to the way she was holding herself on her paws. Furthermore, my timeline is correct. She had the procedure done the first week of December. I don't know how, but her nails somehow grew back that fast, and the points beyond the quick did not fill in. 

I knew the procedure would be painful, yes. But does the fact that she walks better, feels okay going up stairs, and jumping on my bed again outweigh that? I'm not sure about you, but for a dog that wants to constantly be moving around with you, I'm assuming so. Is the fact that she won't have to go through the trauma of battling the groomers every time they try to get any bit of nail off without hitting the quick something my dog will be happy to not have to do anymore, aside from the routine trim? I made sure to combat her pain: pain pills, pain shots, anti inflammatory shots-- she got it all. As for yesterday's visit, they did not quick them again, they left a good margin (thank you over-worrying-mom mode for the dramatic post). And again, she got more pain medication, and an anti inflammatory (hell, she even got frozen yogurt afterwards for being such a champ). .

Thank you so much for all the criticism and attacks, though.


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## [email protected] (Nov 18, 2013)

Once again, Bullys, I think you are missing the point of this thread. This is not an attack on you. This is a harsh criticism of a very painful procedure that is massively overused by some owners and by some vets. As Emmett and I discussed, there are RARE cases where this procedure can be justified for medical reasons. Only you know if this was true in your dog's case. However I will repeat what I said before: I am actively approached by a dozen or more clients a year who believe that this is justified in their dog, and I turn down 99%+ of them because I firmly believe they are wrong. When I bought one of my practices 14 years ago they were performing hundreds of these procedures a year and the two vets who were working there at the time (and all of the owners) collectively thought that what they were going was justified. What you should be getting out of this thread is that in the vast majority of cases where this is done it is unnecessary and (I'm going to say it!)--cruel. This is justified animal cruelty under the guise of veterinary medicine, and this is by no means the only sort of case where owners and (certain unethical) vets conspire to exchange money for doing things that should be illegal. More than once various state organizations have considered banning this procedure completely, but always stop short of doing so due to the RARE cases where its use can be justified. And therein lies the problem: As long as any loophole is left open, some vets will jump right through it because they can make money.
My goal in this thread (and on this forum) is to get the members to really think about their interactions with their vet and not to just keep doing what they have always done. Hopefully there are a few out there who did not participate in this thread but who have previously had this done to their dogs and who may avoid it in the future. I'm not here to say if in your individual case you should not have had the nails removed. Use my personal measuring stick: If you honestly would have this done to yourself and believe that the balance of your quality of life would be improved, then it probably was for your dog. At the end of the day we are all (hopefully) here to be our pet's advocate and protector. I just get to see far too many clients who put their own convenience before their pet's well-being.


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## Kyllobernese (Feb 5, 2008)

I just wanted to make it clear that when Our Vet trims the dog's nails when they are under anaesthetic for something, they never take them down past the quick. If the nails are a normal length, they do not take them shorter unless they can do it without quicking them. Kris' nails were not overly long but they could take them a little shorter than I would be able to with her moving around. They do not charge for it and I appreciate the fact they will do it. I would certainly object if they were really short and had obviously been cauterized.


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