Hardwood Floors

Tanya and I just rented a place in London, ON. One step closer to being where I belong.

Anyhoo, the place has wall to wall hardwood floors. Any advice about care of such floors when you have a big dog with BIG toenails? We are of course going to get a lot of area rugs, but I would love to hear other ideas. Perhaps a particular floor care product that is good at hiding/'removing' small scratches and such?

trim and file the nails .

The floors will get scratched a bit, but I wouldn't worry too much about it to be honest. I redid the living-room floor over the summer and yes, Jakes managed to scratch them here and there, but it's nothing that can't be fixed up with a bit of varnish if it gets out of hand but it's also not very noticable - and he does abuse those floors to the best of his ability.

LOL, that is Tanya's job. We do keep them well trimmed, but even when they are freshly clipped, they are still long enough to do damage. We don't want to cut his 'quik'. (If that is the right word for it.)

Good to know. We are renting the place and I do not want to deal with having to pay a lot when we leave it. Thanks!

Pick up a dremmel and you can get them pretty short if you do it frequently. it also doens't leave a rough edge. even with the nails I've never had a problem with a real hardwood florr. But the fake one my dad has gets scratched all the time.

I have heard of people getting those plastic inserts put over their dogs nails to keep them from ruining the floor. One lady has her Vet order them and put them on her dog.

Our hardwood floors were never damaged, even with the three dogs running full-speed on them, skidding around.

Keep his nails trimmed and filed (Filing is most important - you want them to be smooth so they don't scratch up the floor.) get some styptic powder for his nails, just in case you do cut the quick. (I've done it to my dog before, he didn't even seem to care, just twitched his foot a bit.) The 'soft claws' things work very well, we had them for our cats but I know they make them for dogs as well.