How does dental health impact the overall health of my dog?
The healthier that our mouth is, the healthier the rest of our body is. It's very, very closely tied to other organ failure. It's very closely tied to other organ health, such as liver and kidney health, and our heart. If we have an infection that sets up in our mouth, that can definitely get into the bloodstream and set up an infection in our heart and cause heart issues. And this is very, very critical for dogs that may already have underlying heart issues. It can make them a lot worse and potentially cause them to go into heart failure if it's severe enough.
How can I care for my dog's teeth at home?
This is a wonderful question. There are so many things that we can do for our dogs. Just simply giving them a dental chew toy is fantastic. That will help, at least with the molars, the teeth in the back that they actually chew with, will help get that plaque and tartar off every day. It unfortunately doesn't help with the canine teeth or the incisors, so the canines with the long teeth kind of at the side or the incisors, because they don't chew with those. Those you'll have to take care of with other means, such as a water additive that will decrease the bacteria in their mouth every time they drink their water. You can also do toothbrushing. It's recommended five or more days a week to actually make an impact on the amount of plaque and tartar in the mouth. If you're not doing at least five days a week, you're going to do something, but it's not going to be a way to prevent the plaque and tartar buildup. It'll just slow down that progression. You can brush with a toothbrush or a finger toothbrush. You always want to make sure you're using pet-only toothpaste. Pet toothpaste doesn't have any soap in it. It would cause GI issues if they swallow it. You can start off simply by allowing them to lick the toothpaste off of the toothbrush or chew on it. When you do the brushing, you're actually only going to focus on the gum line on the outside of the teeth. They don't have flat surfaces like we do to brush, and you don't want to brush on the inside of the teeth at all. It could be as simple as having really, really smelly breath, especially if they come over and lick you and then you smell afterwards. This can mean that they've got an infection in their mouth. That's just the easiest way. There are a lot of other things. Maybe pain when we're eating, turning our head to one side and only chewing our food on one side, or our toy. Only putting our toy on one side to chew, and they don't chew on the other side. It can be just general grumpiness. Their mouth hurts just like us. When our mouth hurts, we get grumpy. They do, too. Having them be less tolerant of normal things around the house can just be a sign of pain. Sometimes we see things on our annual exams or every six-month exams when we look in their mouth that the owners didn't even know about because the dogs are so good at hiding their pain. This is really unfortunate because they can live with pain for a very long time before we notice or do anything about it. This is another reason why we recommend in older dogs having every six-month exams so we can make sure that their dental disease doesn't progress to the point where we are living with pain and having infection in the mouth.
What are some of the common dental diseases in dogs?
It can be as simple as having plaque and tartar build up to the point where we're losing our gum, which means we have our gums reseed and we're having the roots of our teeth exposed. It could be infection in the mouth or a tooth root abscess. In a young dog, it could be a retained puppy tooth that allows food or hair or anything to get in between the adult tooth and the baby tooth, and that can set up a disease around the root of that adult tooth. We can also have teeth that never came out of the gums and are still in the bone. This can set up for cysts or tumors. This is another thing that we like to look for when we look in the mouth and do an oral health exam. We can catch a lot of different types of tumors in the mouth just by doing an exam. Some dogs are very cooperative in the room and we can get a really good oral health exam that way. Some dogs need to have a sedated oral health exam, but we like to make sure that we can make sure that they're...
How often should my dog's teeth be checked?
Ideally, you would be brushing your dog's teeth multiple times a week. This will allow you to see potentially if there is something that is just starting to occur. Other than that, if they're young, we would like to see them at least once a year for exams, even if they're not due for vaccines. And if they're older, we would like to see them twice a year, so every six months, so that we can examine their teeth. But again, ideal situation would be you are seeing their teeth multiple times a week as you're brushing.
What's a professional dental cleaning like for my dog?
It's a lot like our dental procedures with our dental hygienists. The exception is that they are under full anesthesia. Unfortunately, there are some people that need to be under full anesthesia for dentals just because of fear, and it's kind of the same reason for dogs and cats too. So in our dogs, we want to make sure that they're not terrified when we're in their mouth looking around and potentially squirting water in there, doing scaling. Those are some things that most people are okay with, but there are no dogs that really are okay with that. And so under full anesthesia, they have a breathing tube so that when we're squirting water in their mouth to clean their mouth out, we are not going to have them aspirate and get that in their lungs. We are able to do full mouth x-rays to make sure that all of their teeth are healthy. We can do a really good exam of all aspects of their mouth, the gum, the tooth, all sides, under the tongue, the back of the mouth, and make sure that everything is nice and healthy.
How do I know my dog needs a dental exam?
Sometimes it can be just as simple as they have really stinky breath. Another thing you can see is when you have plaque and tartar building up on the teeth. That's definitely a sign that they need a dental exam. Actually, if you have a small breed dog, even if we don't see a lot of buildup, it is recommended that they have their first under anesthesia dental cleaning by the time they're two and a half years old because we have so many genetic dental disease problems in small breed dogs. We want to stop the disease progress and keep their teeth healthy for as many years as we possibly can.
How often does my dog need a dental exam?
Well, this is really individual. Some dogs will only need it every few years. I have seen some dogs, larger breed dogs, that are 10 or 11 years old before they actually have any amount of plaque and tartar buildup and unfortunately it's a genetic luck of the draw. And our smaller breed dogs, again, should have their first under anesthesia cleaning by the time they're two and a half. Sometimes they need them as frequently as every six months if they have really, really bad genetic dental health. And this is all to keep their teeth as healthy as we can for as long as they can and prevent multiple tooth extractions on a yearly basis.
How do I know if my dog's teeth are causing them pain?
One of the things you may see is that they're chewing their food only on one side. They're chewing their toy only on one side. A lot of times they don't chew their food at all, so this may be something that is not easily seen. But if you see that they are kind of delicate when they're getting their food or they're tilting their head to one side when they get their food or they're chewing on their favorite toy only on one side, these may be some signs or a reluctance to eat. This is definitely a major sign of pain. There's not a lot that'll keep a dog from eating because they really like it. Hesitancy for you to reach up and pet their head because their mouth hurts, that would be another sign.
Is there anything I can do to help my dog prepare for a dental appointment?
One of the things that we love to offer are pre-operative visits so that we can make sure the health of your dog is as good as possible. We offer ECG screening with a cardiologist interpretation. It's a very low-cost test that can tell us how healthy your dog's heart is and if they are okay for anesthesia. Another thing that we offer is complete blood work, liver and kidney function, electrolyte balance, red blood cells, and white blood cells. So are we making enough red blood cells to carry oxygen appropriately or do we have an infection already that we need to address? So these are some things that we offer before the anesthesia so that we can tailor their anesthesia just to them and make the safest possible decisions for their anesthetic protocols.
Will my dog be getting dental x-rays?
Yes, every single dog gets dental x-rays every single time. So the tooth that we see in their mouth is only half to a third of their tooth. The rest of it is under the gum line and we can have teeth that look absolutely fantastic just visually in the mouth but are really diseased. So on x-ray we may see that part of that tooth isn't even there which means under the enamel we have a lot of tooth loss or we can see an abscess at the root of the tooth. We can see that it died many years ago and it's not discolored but we have issues there due to this tooth being dead for multiple years. We can see fractures that we may not see just on a visual inspection. There's a lot of things that we can see.
How long does a dog dental cleaning appointment take?
A dog dental cleaning varies in length. Anything from just under an hour for a dog with good dental health and just some plaque and tartar that we need to clean up to a dog that needs multiple extractions and has maybe lost a lot of bone in the jaw due to disease. So in those cases, we take longer because we don't want fractures of the jaw. We want to make sure that everything is as safe as possible. Every extraction we do is a surgical extraction meaning that if bone needs to be removed we remove that, we make a flap, we sew the gums shut. If there are multiple roots on that tooth we section the tooth so each section comes out with only one root. This helps ensure that each extraction is done as safely as possible and with the least amount of pain.
If my dog needs extractions, will he be given pain medication?
100%. So part of what we do is we do an anti-inflammatory injection unless your pet is already on anti-inflammatories or it's contraindicated in their health. We also do nerve blocks for the extractions just like our dentist does and fortunately because they are already asleep those injections don't hurt like it can with us. So their mouth is going to be numb and that provides long-term, so that area of their mouth will be numb and that will provide hours of pain relief after the extraction itself. And then we also send home medications to help with their pain control.
If you still have other questions and you'd like to reach out to us, you can call us directly at (618) 457-4133, or you can email us at [email protected]. But please do reach out, and we'll get back to you as fast as we can. Don't forget to follow us on social media Facebook, Instagram