Does Your Dog Need a Dental Exam?

If your pet has bad breath, hand shy around the mouth area, bloody discharge on toys, vocalizing when yawning and loose teeth. You need to book a dental exam.

Dental disease is one of the single painful issue’s pets can have. It is important for your pet to have a dental exam, where a veterinarian can alert you on the dental issues your pet has and determine the most effective treatment.

Cats and dogs will not hold still for us to clean their teeth during dentistry. So, we have to give them anesthetic. Prior to the anesthetic, we would do blood work in order to make sure all their major organs are functioning properly and do a red and white blood count to make sure there is no infection. Once that is done, we can proceed with the anesthetic. We would do a full assess the teeth while they are sleeping, remove the teeth that need extraction, clean and polished.

How do you to prevent dental disease?

As for people, we need to brush our pets’ teeth. We start brushing teeth on our pets at an early age to get used to it. There are products on the market that help with tartar control that can be used on older pets that have not been exam yet. If your pet has loose teeth or bad breath you cannot brush their teeth, it would be too painful. They would need a dental exam.

Written by: Marisa Straub, Receptionist