Dental Month is just around the courner

February is National Dental Month

 What Can I Do to Help Keep My Pet’s Mouth Healthy:

First and foremost, have your pet’s mouth evaluated with your veterinarian to determine what stage (how bad) your pet’s mouth is. Your pet’s mouth and teeth will be graded from 0-4. Zero is perfect while four is the most severe (dirtiest mouth). This is an important step, because it will help you determine how to best treat your pet.

Once your pet’s mouth is evaluated you know if a professional, veterinary supervised dental cleaning is needed or if only home care is needed.

If a dental cleaning is needed, it is recommended not only by us but by the California Veterinary Medical Association to have your pet placed under a general anesthesia and have his or her teeth cleaned and polished and sealed under VETERINARY supervision. We know that some groomers “clean your pets teeth” but most of the time this is just a tooth brushing. If it entails more (scraping the teeth, polishing the teeth, extracting the teeth) then it is illegal for them to do as this is considered practicing veterinary medicine and worse, they could damage your pet’s gums or teeth.

What about anesthesia free dentistry? Well quite frankly, this too is not sufficient. Most of you hopefully have gone to your dentist before. Imagine your dentist trying to clean your teeth while you move your head from side to side. A good teeth cleaning would not be obtained.

Here at Smith Veterinary Hospitalwe recommend a pre-anesthetic blood profile prior to all anesthesias and require it for pets over the age of five along with an examination to determine the best and safest anesthesia for your pet. This allows us to use an ultrasonic scaler to clean all the calculus (tartar) off the crown of the tooth and under the gums along the roots of the teeth. This is followed by polishing to remove all microscopic scratches along the tooth made by dental instruments scratching the tooth and this reduces the amount of bacteria that stick to the tooth. Then we highly recommend sealing the tooth to help reduce tartar buildup in the future. Extractions of teeth irreversibly damaged are performed only if that tooth if deemed unable to save. Root canals are available for pets, but most need to be performed by a board certified veterinary dentist. Fortunately, most pets do well with extractions even if a lot of teeth are extracted. Most animals requiring multiple extractions are older whom have never had any sort of dental care. Smaller dogs are more likely to have teeth extracted as they tend to have over crowded mouths.