Owners need to find a way to make the sofa or the bed an UNcomfy place for the dog to lay their head even when the humans aren’t around. There are a variety of products on the market that will help you do this: mats that feel uncomfortable to their paws, that make a sound, or produce a mild electric stimulation/shock. A visit to your local pet store’s training section will let you browse through the choices.

But here at GreyhoundFreaks, we strive to bring you novel(and hopefully inexpensive!) solutions to common behavioral problems. Our dogs are allowed to get on all of our furniture…but that wasn’t always the case. When Ken and I got married, I had two greyhounds and he had four. I also had beautiful, expensive leather furniture* that was not necessarily made to withstand a greyhound’s nails or the nesting that so often precedes a good snooze. My two girls had never been allowed on the living room furniture (though, to be fair, they never tried to get on the furniture)…but dear husband’s were allowed to snooze anywhere they wished. Soon after moving into our first home, we bought a new dog-friendly set of furniture for the den, but I needed to find a quick and easy solution to keeping them off the good sofa in the living room.

While browsing through Lowe’s one day, I walked past a display of plastic carpet runners. I remembered visiting my Grandma as a kid and the plastic capet runner in her hallway. My cousins and I had great fun turning it upside down and running up and down the hallway in our bare feet. And that got me to wondering if the prickly side of the carpet runner would be enough to deter a furniture-loving hound.

So I bought one and tried it out. A few of the dogs jumped up on the sofa and quickly decided that was NOT the place they wanted to rest their bottoms! Because the carpet runner was clear plastic, it wasn’t too visually offensive to leave on all the time…and when company came over it only took seconds to pull off and slide under the sofa. Problem solved!

Hopefully you will find this solution works in your home! I’ve also found it works to keep our cats off the treadmill and other flat surfaces they may try to sharpen their claws.

 *After much consideration, we decided that the beautiful, delicate leather furniture would have a happier life in another home where it wouldn’t have to live in fear of the greyhounds. So, we rehomed the it with my mom where it is lovingly cared for (and there are no dogs!). At least I still get to visit.

The tools you’ll need: A handheld rotary tool. We use the Dremel brand.

Our Dremels

We own two dremel styles, though to be honest I very rarely ever use the smaller dremel. I like the adjustability the larger dremel gives me. I can use a higher speed on thick, hard nails and a slower speed on those very soft, light nails. We use the 60 grit sandpaper wheels. The finer grit sandpaper doesn’t last as long and I’ve found that the dogs are more sensitive to it (pull their feet away more often). Maybe the finer grit gets hotter faster…I’m not sure, but I’ve had much better luck and results with the 60 grit.

Our model for this session is Prajna and the dremeling is being done by Ken.  Please note: We let his nails grow long for demonstration purposes only!

1) Flatten the bottom of the nail. This will help reveal where the quick is as you can usually see it from the underside of the nail.

2) Go straight back on the nail. Depending on the nail and how it grows you may need to hold the dremel at different angles so it grinds smoothly against the nail.

Once you get back to the quick, just round off any sharp edges. The quick is the dark meaty-looking part at the middle of the nail.

Here’s an example of a front foot that I dremeled. You can see that I don’t round as much as Ken does. That’s really personal preference. The goal is to get the nails shorter than they were when you started and not to leave any sharp or jagged edges on the nail.

Happy Dremeling!