Can you harden up dog pads?

Mudbath

Hiya
First of all, thank you for advice you gave me a few weeks ago about walking without pulling. Stripes is now a lot better - not perfect but no longer nearly killing me!

We now have a new problem. Last week she started limping. I got her home and we found a thorn in her pad. I cleaned it up and it appears fine. Today she started limping again and I've noticed she has a small split in the pad on a different paw. She has had this before especially when we first got her because she's a rescue spotty and was kept inside for the first 5 months of her life.

Should I be doing more pavement walking to harden her pads up or will this not really make a difference? At the moment we walk for five minutes on pavements to the park but then she runs round like a loon on the grass and in the mud so she's only gets about 20 minutes, in total, a day on hard ground (twice a day to the park) and then about 70 minutes on grass.

Any ideas would be most welcome.

Thank you.

UKTigerlily

You could buy Paw Wax, i've just got some & am about to try it on my Dog. Mine only has pavement walks but still has dodgy pads, she's always tearing them off or getting infections between the toes & so on!

YorkiePud_3

The best thing to harden a dog's paw pads to make them less apt to split or get cut is to feed them black pudding! My family have always kept greyhounds as pets and some of them can get splits in their pads and can cut them quite easily too but if you feed your dog black pudding (we've always given them it twice a week in their dinner, about a quarter a link of black pudding chopped up small) and it is amazing.

One of my greyhounds actually ran into a shallow pond and cut her pad right open on something in the water and the vet said it would take quite some time to heal and could keep splitting but I kept on feeding her black pudding with her dinner twice a week and within a fortnight it had all healed up. He couldn't believe it ... or the fact that her pad didn't split open again and the skin hardened up so that you couldn't tell where the original split had been!

I don't know the whys and wherefores, but it really does work!

callywally

You could try dabbing surgical spirits on the pads this should harden them up.

morg_monster

callywally wrote: »

You could try dabbing surgical spirits on the pads this should harden them up.

but make sure any cuts etc are healed first... otherwise OWWWWWW!

Mudbath

Thanks again everyone. DH went up to Scotland to visit his family at the weekend....dare I sneak the black pudding he bought back with him into the dogs bowl :rotfl:.

The split in her pad is starting to heal. I've not taken her to the vet because it's clean and healing and I'm keeping her out of the mud. Feel a bit bad not taking her but she seems ok and if it starts to look funny i'll take her immediately.

Pets!

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Can't quite believe I'm saying this, but -

You can get socks or bootees for the more delicate dog paws. Cooking oil is quite soothing for dry paws, then the boots stop too much licking and protect in very rocky/brambled conditions (or rougher areas of town)