#chihuha

Why are you addicted to biting your nails?

I was taking a break after the walking with Naomi, and there was a familiar chewing sound of nails in the living room, so I immediately thought that this must be coming from Naomi and just checked her. And yes, I was right. When I saw her, she was biting her nails madly. After observing it for a while, I was thinking about the reason for this behavior of her.

Naomi chews her nails fairly often, but there is no injury and a health problem, so I don't have a feeling that she needs to visit a vet for this matter with her therefore, I just let her do it when she does so far. But, I just had my interest on the reason for why dogs chew their nails, so I researched about it and knew that there are quite various reasons on this behavior according to a dog specialist. There is a wide range of reasons from a reasonable reason, the case of mental care needed or the cause that may require a treatment or a consultation with a veterinarian, so if your furry friend has a same behavior, this information must help, so please check what are the reasons for.

Various reasons to dogs bite their nails

● Likelihood of stress 

Dog expert says that dogs often bite their nails due to stress is the most likelihood. If the cause is stress, it is necessary to determine the factors that caused the stress at first. The major factors for this are lack of exercise and lack of communication with the owner. And also, a change in the environment or a change in temperature are seems to be related to this factor.

If these are the causes to dogs to bite their nails, reducing dog stress can be a solution to this problem.

● Likelihood of long nails

This seems to be quite often happening with Naomi. When nails are too long, and dogs feel uncomfortable with it, they bite their nails. It's a good idea to check their nails frequently and cut them.

● Likelihood of killing a time

Puppy chews nails when the puppy's teeth change, so this is because some dogs may have become habitual to chew their nails even they grew up.

As a countermeasure, it's better to give something distracting, such as a dog's dental treats, and see how it goes.

● Likelihood of under tension

When a dog is nervous about something, it sometimes bites his nails. A dog can calm his mind to doing this which has been well known as a similar behavior in human. If this behavior goes a little time and stop, it can be a temporary tension, but if dogs can not stop it, the owner must need to find the factor for this.

As a countermeasure in this case, the living environment is the key, so the behavior is going to be resolved by creating an environment with peace of mind so that the dog's feelings can calm down.

● Likelihood of Smell

If there is some smell on dog's paws or the nails, they may lick their paws or bite their nails to clean it up. This is a temporary behavior, so there is no problem. If you don't like them to do, you should wipe it out and they will soon be able to stop doing it.

● Likelihood of injury, inflammation and itching

They may lick their paws or bite their nails due to injuries, inflammations and itching, and the factors of these are usually cracking nails, have a foreign material like a prickle on paws, have a injury and feel uncomfortable or have pain, have itching due to food allergies. It is easy to determine the cause with an external appearance, but otherwise it is difficult, so there is no other way but to consult a veterinarian and determine what the cause is.

The factors which dogs might had gotten when they are in a wild in the first place such as overgrown claws, a chewing habit, and cleaning their feet are not serious behaviors what we have to pay too much attentions even though we are their owners now, but other factors related to their stresses, tensions and itching from food allergies are what we need to be aware of which might have created by us in this society, and so this responsibility is significant.

To this, to determine the cause is the owner's duty, and we need to be serious to take an immediate action as an owner for these factors if necessary.

In addition to the above-mentioned action of biting nails, there is also an action of simply licking paws to a dog. This behavior had been seen for a moment in the winter by Naomi, and from the appearance judgment, I found that an extreme cold climate can let dog's paws to crack due to the ice and the dry air, so besides food allergies, there are a chance to dog to lick its legs due to such this factor.

Anyway, this was treated with an immediate treatment with a moisture cream for dog's paws. Like a human, a dog also can get a pain and difficult to walk if the cracks in the paws deteriorated, so treatment at an early stage is very important.