I just did a preliminary, brief trim of Oji's front nails including dews. This, with the intention of finishing the job later today or soon.
As I often do, I started by talking very calmly and even softly/sweetly as I first praised him for walking alongside me under his own power to the trimming area (corner of our dining room). I then gave some of his favorite petting, rubbing and scratching, switched-on dremel in hand, and a bit more soft talking.
I basically never talk this way with him. I haven't wanted to do a lot of it during trimming, as I don't want it to freak him out – like something is out of place or wrong. I also don't want my uncharacteristic soft-talking to begin to trigger him in the future into "oh no, here comes the unpleasant part." I do know however, (much to my chagrin) that he has shown that he is a sucker for baby talk. My wife gives it to him and he eats it up and then some.
As an aside: I don't know if this is possible, but I know his breeder is a big-time baby talker with their Dobes. I know the pups were brought up in their home with a lot of baby talk, including that sort of talk, or at least the high-pitched tones of their pre-teen sons who helped out and played with the pups. So I don't know if it can be ingrained in a dog to be attracted to this type of talk. He has some pronounced features of his dam, and I know the dam has experienced a lifetime of baby talk. Anything here? It's also quite possible that Oji is just a lil' ol' softy – while also having plenty of hardness to him.
Back to the abbreviated, surface trim session: I decided to just continue on with the soft talk all the way through this session if possible. I knew I was going to keep the trim pretty shallow and as such hopefully not take it to the point where he starts to freak out. If he started to freak out, I would have to stop the sweet talk and shut up so as not to condone and reward that behavior.
Well, even though he did do a bit of the fighting and jerking – nothing too bad relatively speaking – we got through this soft-talking surface-trim rather successfully.
Big bonus: This amount of trimming – and just on the front paws – was enough to get his nails to stop clacking on the hardwood floor.