So Mr. Mowgli with his shiny coat goes once a month. We actually use two different groomers in town. The dogs prefer different people just like we go to different hairdressers or barbers for our haircuts— Mowgli has his favorite. If you have a dog with a long coat you might need to go every two or three weeks. If you have a ranch dog that lives outside and jumps in the river like I used to, I never took him to a groomer because he would go straight in the river as soon as he got home.

Most likely your dog has an issue with their anal glands. There can be other causes. Such as if they've had an upset tummy, GI disease, or intestinal parasites, but for the vast majority of dogs when you see them dragging themself with their front feet and scooting their butt, it's because they have an impaction of the anal gland. Momo here is an unwilling volunteer again, but you can see by the side of the dog's anus is a small sack. Anal glands are filled with a liquid that scent marks the feces, similar to a skunk when they lift their tail and spray that scent as a defense mechanism. Dogs have a scent that may have some form of signaling others through their feces. We can remove that gland when there's a problem and it doesn't create any issues, so it may be vestigial. It may not have a function these days. It certainly creates issues for dogs when the glands fill up if the liquid becomes thick. Like toothpaste, it can be hard to express, and they can rupture. We can see draining fistulas coming through the skin where it's all infected under the tissue and it's very painful. As veterinarians, we don't necessarily automatically go and press on a dog’s anal glands. There are dogs, however, that have frequent infections and issues that we will schedule for a monthly visit to check on them. Your groomer will usually express them from the outside. If we look down here, they'll squeeze the gland through the skin. At the vet office, the vet will actually put a glove on and put a finger inside the rectum and squeeze right around the gland and get a bit more material out. This helps to check that they're not infected or full and to keep the material down, so we recommend different things on a case-by-case basis.

That's one of the reasons I became a vet was so that I could help dogs with anal glands issues. I'm joking on that one. That's one of my least favorite areas, but it's a really common problem.

We see several pets come in with damaged nails. If a dog catches a nail when they're running, the nail can rip really short, and then it's hanging off, and it's very, very painful. We get that every week—a dog will come in, and we'll have to remove the nail to make them comfortable. Older pets that aren't digging and running around will sometimes have nails that are so long that they just catch on stuff. In cats, they'll grow in a circle right into the pads and create really painful infections that people don't notice. As a human, why do you trim your nails? It's hygienic and it's going to be awkward to function if you have very long nails.