Dog Dental Care

Dogs eat through severe dental pain — appetite is the last thing to go. Meanwhile infection erodes bone and seeds bacteria to the heart, liver, and kidneys. After extractions of diseased teeth, owners routinely tell us their dog acts years younger; that's what untreated pain was costing.

Because the disease lives below the gumline: X-rays, probing, and subgingival cleaning are impossible in an awake dog. 'Anesthesia-free cleaning' polishes the visible crown and misses the pathology — cosmetic reassurance while problems progress.

Daily brushing with pet toothpaste is the gold standard — even three times weekly measurably helps. Add VOHC-accepted chews or dental diets, and follow the five-minute rule: a chew gone in under five minutes isn't cleaning anything.

The most common symptom or sign of dental disease in dogs is bad breath. So really, if your dog has chronically bad breath, that's because there's a lot of nasty bacteria underneath the gum line, creating some really nasty smells. And so that's the most common. There are more severe signs, but not until they're really severe, and that would be if they're drooling or dropping food. That's when the mouth is so bad that they can't even eat.

We have gingivitis, which is inflammation of the gums along the border between the tooth and the gum. So you would see the redness of the gum. Periodontal disease is a more severe disease when the disease goes underneath the gum line and up the inside of the tooth. That's periodontal disease. We can also have broken teeth. Dogs get tumors in their mouth. Certain tumors grow due to inflammation in certain breeds, or they can get oral cancers. So really, when we talk about dental disease and oral health, we're talking about all the above.

By keeping the mouth really clean, just like you or me, if we have regular dental care and have our teeth professionally cleaned hopefully at least twice a year and we are really good about brushing and flossing at home, we can keep our teeth clean and our mouths healthy. If we wait three years and then start doing that, we're going to have many more issues. It's the same thing with dogs and cats that if we can keep their mouths healthy, keep them healthy beforehand, then we're going to get to keep those teeth a lot longer, and we'll have a lot less pain in the mouth as well.

At a minimum, once a year. So in dogs above 10 years, we recommend twice a year because we start to see things accelerate more at that stage, and we begin to see a lot more dental disease. And we don't want to wait and hold off. I know some people get fearful of dentals because they require anesthesia, and people are afraid of anesthesia. And I always tell people that I know for sure that the dental disease will progress. There's always some risk with anesthesia. But honestly, we never have any issues here because we're so diligent with our anesthetic protocols. And so there is nothing to worry about. There are things to worry about, though, with letting dental disease progress, which are pain and illness, and that's not a good situation.

Your dog would come to the veterinary clinic or hospital first. We would examine them before the day of the procedure, and we would draw some blood to make sure that their kidney and liver and everything's in good shape. We will check their heart and do a thorough physical exam on them before we do any anesthesia. Then the day they come in here, we're going to go ahead and give them just a little pre-anesthetic for anxiety and to help with soothing the anesthetic procedure. We're going to place an IV catheter. That's so they can have fluids, and that's a way of supporting them during the anesthetic process. At some point, they're going to be anesthetized, and they're going to be intubated, being that they're going to have a tracheal tube down into their throat. So we help them breathe. And that's how we administer the gas anesthetic as well. Then the dental cleaning is going to occur, and the doctor will be right there with the technician who's doing the cleaning. We're going to take dental X-rays because half the tooth is underneath the gum line. So if we don't take dental X-rays, we don't know what's going on. We're going to assess the X-rays. We're going to check the pockets of the teeth, the space between, how much space is underneath the gum that's being exposed, or a cause for any pain. That could be a place where there's disease, periodontal disease. And then we're going to decide whether or not there's going to need to be any extractions, which hopefully that's not the case. Before we do anything like that in the dental surgery, we're going to call you and let you know what we found and get your permission to go ahead and proceed, which you generally are going to do. We're going to wake your pet, then after the procedure, provide pain medication, which can include an intraoral (local) block. It's going to include IV meds and probably some oral medication to go home. They're going to stay with us until they're completely recovered from the anesthesia. But when we send them home, and they are still going to be a little bit sleepy. So you can anticipate that. But certainly, we take calls for a couple of hours after this. So if anything is going on, you're always welcome to call us.

We will be happy to show you when you're here at the hospital, but we also have a video online to show you. Dog toothpaste and dog toothbrushes explicitly made for them will make it easier for you to do that. And we do have different sizes; we don't have the same size for a Chihuahua as our German Shepherd. So there are different sizes and even different flavors of toothpaste.

No, we don't recommend that you use human toothpaste on your dog because it's not meant to be swallowed, and the dogs will swallow their toothpaste because they're not going to be spitting. So we want you to use dog toothpaste.

Dogs can get cavities, although they're pretty rare. We see a lot more periodontal disease and gingival disease, and broken teeth due to chewing on things. But they can get cavities.