Bleeding around the toes?

[Hockey Guy]

My two year old Lab is bleeding around every toenail when he goes out to play. He is an indoor dog and I think this cold weather may have caused serious chapping from going outside. They stop bleeding as soon as we get home from the park but it still worries me. Has anyone else experienced this? Last night I had to wash the blood off his legs and undercarriage is was so bad. When I left the house this morning I put one of those lampshades on him and smeared Vaseline around each toenail. Any other suggestions?

[crappiefishnfool]

Bleeding around the toes is usually caused by the snow cutting the feet open, especially if the dog is an inside dog. The best thing to do is get a pair of those rubber booties for the dog. I had to do this for my female lab because everytime we would go to the cabin i would have the same problem. I would just try the rubber boots for the dog or find something to cover his/her feet and you should have a problem after that other than getting the dog comfortable with the booties. Sometimes you have to start out with them wearing them in the house so that you can watch them. It took me 2 days to get mine to be comfortable with them. The key is, put them on the dog, and then keep them occupied so that they forget they have them on. Well i hope this helps ya.

[LABS4ME]

Talk to your vet and ask them for a "pad coat" product. There are several out there, some aerosol, some a waxxy paste, they'll all help in the chapping area and most help 'toughen' up the pad. We use them a lot in the fall when hunting stubble as this really tears their pads up. Also the more you can run them on some asphalt through the summer, the stronger their pads seem to get, but we still use the pad conditioners late in the pheasant season. I just can't get around the hassle of using and losing dog booties.

Good Luck!

Ken

[gspman]

Crusty snow seems to be the worst at causing this. I've never used the pad toughener products but many outfitters in quail country use it. Believe it or not sometimes the way a dog runs can make this problem worse too.

[Hockey Guy]

Thanks for all the replies. The problem that he has isn't where his pads make contact with the ground. The bleeding is around each toenail where the nail makes contact with the skin. On most of them it bleeds the full 360 degrees around the nail! I keep his nails cut pretty short since he is indoors most of the time so I know he's not hooking them on anything. I made an appointment to take him to the vet tonight. Hopefully they will have seen it before and know how to treat it. Thanks again.

[packattack]

The problem could be that you are cutting the toe nails to short and crushing the blood vessels. Just a thought.