Ready to go home after having his dentistry
He recently had a dental cleaning and dental x-rays taken. Now his teeth are pearly white and his breath smells fresh!
While he was having his annual exam earlier this year Dr. Kathy noticed he had early symptoms of dental disease and recommended the dental cleaning and x-rays.
The good news with dental disease is if it’s caught early enough we can reverse most of the effects and reduce the need for dental extractions, by performing a thorough dental cleaning.
Dental x-rays allow us to see what is going on below the gumline. Pets can develop bone loss or damage to the root of a tooth or may have teeth that have not erupted and the only way to find this out is with dental x-rays.
In this x-ray you can see the canine teeth (the really big ones) and the incisor teeth (the little ones in between) and appreciate just how much of the teeth are below the gumline.
Here you can see the pre-molars and molars on the lower jaw – again noting that the roots are considerably larger than the crown (the area above the gumline)
You may wonder why does your pet require an anesthetic for a dental cleaning. Here are a few great reasons:
- Our pets don’t understand that we need them to sit still and not move during dental procedures
- Our pets have much more tartar than we do so we will use an ultrasonic scaler to remove it. This is loud and could scare your pet if awake.
- We scale below the gum line to remove tartar that accumulates there. This would be uncomfortable to have done while awake.
- Our x-ray film is small and in order to take certain views the film needs to be positioned in a way that would pose a risk of ingestion/choking on an awake patient.
- To see all of your pets teeth we often need to move your pets head to many different positions and often get our eyes as close as possible. This could also be very scary for some pets.
- Another benefit of anesthesia is that our patients will have a breathing tube placed in their trachea which will prevent an bacteria or tartar from being inhaled into their respiratory system.
How do you know if your pet might have dental disease:
- Bad breath
- Changes in eating habits or chewing
- Pawing at the mouth or face
- Excessive drooling
- Loss of appetite or unexplained weight loss
- Red, swollen or bleeding gums
- Loose, broken or abscessed teeth
Your pets annual exam will also help us to identify any changes in your pets oral health and make a plan before major dental surgery is needed.
Please give the clinic a call or email to book your pet in for their exam.
