The cornerstone of your pet’s health is dental health.
Very infrequently are pet parents able to get a peek inside their pet’s mouth. Sometimes a quick whiff of bad breath is enough to know something isn’t quite as it should be in Max or Cali’s mouth. The odor you smell emanating from your pet’s mouth is odor from bacteria. These bacteria live on the surface of the gums, tongue, and teeth and also are found in tooth roots where an abscess is sometimes found. Just the word abscess makes us all cringe a bit as it denotes pain, not feeling well and sometimes even fever. Long term, a mouth with excess bacteria can wreak havoc on major organs like the heart, kidney, and liver. Did you know that bad teeth can affect your dog’s balance and mobility potentially because of the proprioceptors adjacent to the temporal mandibular joint (TMJ)?
While it is extremely important that we pay attention to diet, exercise, supplements, Chinese herbal formulas, sunshine and socialization with your beloved pets, their overall health will be shortchanged if we do not afford them the opportunities of maintaining oral care that comes in everyday activities such as tooth brushing, dental rinses, appropriate chewing toys but also a trip to the dentist, who in most cases is your favorite full-service veterinary hospital.
Some well-meaning folks are concerned about anesthesia required to perform a dental cleaning (and possible extractions), but in 2019, we have the safest anesthetic protocols available, which can be tailored to specific breeds, age, and health status. When your pet has professional teeth cleaning, the veterinarian and licensed veterinary technician will clean your pet’s teeth very similar to how our dentist cleans our teeth at our “six-month check-ups” with scaling and polishing. The subject of pet oral health is an extremely important topic, and too often it is overlooked due to expense or fear of anesthesia. More and more clinics are setting competitive dental cleaning prices. In the interest of your pet’s health, please start the new year out right and schedule an oral exam with your full-service veterinary hospital to find out more specific details and expectations for your pet’s oral health.
