shes an indoor dog,(pitt) i used to take her on nicelong walks but her arthrits gets to her, so we just go on very short ones now... i have very low carpeting, its like an indoor/outdoor cheap stuff, lol, but her toenails are cracking really badly, to the point they splinter and really hurt her!! im no good at clipping toenails, and she wouldnt let me do it anyway,im sure... what causes this? is there anything i can give her to get them stronger? or when they do crack, what can i do besides an expensive vet visit? i have used an emory board on thembefore, ( like a doggy pedicure) to smooth them out so they dont catch the carpet, she wasnt wild about it, but it did smooth them out... it was a few eeks after that that her front paw split and is hurting her....by the way, i feed her pedigree dog food, mostly kibble, but i mix with pedigree canned about 3 times a week.. she doesnt get many tablescraps at all...any advice? thanks

I am not realy sure, but I found this on a website. hope it can help!
Foot and Nail Problems

The answer to this question depends on exactly what is happening with
the nails.

If you are seeing dry nails that crumble easily when they are trimmed,
but are not sloughing off, not causing pain or other discernible problems,
then there are lots of anecdotal recommendations for treatment. I am not
aware of any studies that show that any of these things actually work, but
anecdotally they are recommended:

Gelatin administration is a common recommendation for treatment of
brittle nails. I have seen a fairly wide range of recommendations for the
amount of gelatin to give. For an 85 lbs. dog the total dosages would be 2 to 5
packages per day (Knox Gelatin (tm) is the most commonly recommended
brand name). I suspect that this is rarely helpful but haven't seen any
reports of it being harmful.

Some sources recommend supplementing biotin when nails are brittle. I
can't recall whether I have seen a study in dogs but I know that in horses
there have been studies that haven't shown much benefit for hoof care, which
should be similar. The recommended dosage is around 5mg/kg (about 200mg
for your dog) of biotin per day, if you want to try this.

Zinc supplementation helps in some dogs. The usual dosage is zinc
gluconate 5mg/kg daily. This probably only works when there is a zinc deficiency,
although some dogs just seem to need more zinc. I don't think of this
as a really common problem but we have seen at least a couple of cases of
zinc deficiency in our practice over the years.

The best bet is probably to supplement with omega n3 fatty acids. This
is usually done using fish oil (3V Capsules tm) and giving 180mg/10lbs of
body weight per day, which is a pretty high dosage. For just dry nails a
lower dosage might be helpful but for the condition discussed next you would
need the higher dosage.

If the nails are actually cracking back to the nail bed, if they are
falling off or if they are deformed, it is likely that there is a
medical cause for the problem. The most likely cause would be lupoid
onchodystrophy, followed by food allergies or other allergies,
ringworm, bacterial infections and immune mediated diseases. Except for the
ringworm and bacterial infections all of these conditions might respond to the
high end dosages of 3V Capsules. It is likely that your vet can give you
some idea of the possibility of an infectious cause following an
examination.

Hello we had a problem like this with our Lab but it wasn't as bad as yours, we used a product from dogandhorsecare.com and it cleared up over some time