People who groom dogs and other clawed animals generally use a pair of scissors or a guillotine style nail clipper to trim animal claws. Scissors and animal nail clippers can be dangerous and painful to the animal if the user is not careful with the amount of claw removed. In every animal claw, there is a vein called the “quick” that lies within the nail bed. This vascular structure is not easily visible if the pigmentation of the nail is dark, as is the case in most dogs. The “quick” has very sensitive nerve endings and is prone to bleed profusely when cut. Cutting the “quick” will cause injury and negative conditioning for the animal and will make the future task of cutting the animal's nails more difficult.
Scissors and anvil style clippers pose a problem when clipping animal nails because the nail can often be crushed or splintered by an inaccurate angle of cut or dull clipper blades. The clipper also has a tendency to make the nail jagged and rough when cut. The animal nail is made of many layers and can be crushed by an inaccurate cutting angle, a dulled blade, or a loose hinge on the clipper.
FIG. 1 illustrates, by way of example, a “prior art” method of trimming a dog's nails using a rotary filing device 60. This drawing shows one of the few operational positions 62 that an animal handler can take when using the current style of rotary animal nail filing device. As FIG. 1 illustrates, the handler has little control over animal movement when the two are facing each other. The prior art illustrates another problem, there is only one angle of operation between the handler and the animal. This angle of operation does not allow control of the animal and may result in an injured nail or paw.
Some dog groomers have tried to use generic rotary tools, such as a Dremel tool, to grind an animal's nail to the desired length. However, high-speed rotary tools have a number of disadvantages when compared to the present invention. By way of example, there is no protective guard to keep the animal from encountering the free spinning grinding wheel. If a rotary tool with an exposed wheel is used to grind the nail of a longhaired dog, the animal's hair can get wound up in the tool, which is a major problem when working with wiggling dogs.
Other issues must be addressed if a rotary tool is to be used to file animal nails. If the direction of the grinding wheel spin is not considered when engaging the nail, the animal's claw will awkwardly skip and bump over the grinding wheel. This can increase fear and discomfort in the animal and adds a significant learning curve when training an animal to be accustomed to the tool.
Another problem with rotary tools is that the nail can fragment and throw nail debris outwardly. This will cause an unwanted mess, and may even lead to a possible eye injury. Still another problem with exposed grinding wheels is that the animal can see the high-speed rotating object and may become fearful and anxious. Problems such as these force many dog owners to have professional groomers perform this task at great expense.
Some conventional approaches attempt to change the style of the rotary tools so they can be used to file an animal's nails. However, these attempts fall short because they still have open face grinding wheels. This poses a problem with dogs because the dog's toes are webbed, making accidental contact on adjacent toes with the spinning wheel a likely situation. Another disadvantage to rotary filing tools is that a trigger must be depressed manually to operate the device. This gives the operator only one free working hand to manipulate the animal. A better solution is to mount the rotary filing tool on a horizontal or vertical surface so the operator can have both hands free to handle the animal.
Some disadvantages of current rotary filing tools include that they have no way to regulate the correct angle of operation, of 50 to 130 degrees, from the nail to the grinding wheel respectively. This angle is often important to obtain a properly shaped nail in many applications. Another disadvantage is that no attempt is made to visually obscure the spinning rotary bit and reduce animal anxiety. Yet another disadvantage is that prior art devices do not have interchangeable housings for different nail sizes and multiple grades of grinding wheels. The best rotary filing tool should have additional features that allow grinding of different types and sizes of animal nails and that can create different finishes on the nail.
Unless otherwise indicated illustrations in the figures are not necessarily drawn to scale.