Home Dental Care

Spit Please!

Read no further if you have a delicate constitution or are about to eat, unless of course you are having difficulty in sticking to your diet!

Fred, an apparently fit 11 year old Chihuahua was first seen because he had what I like to call 'sewer breath' (this is one up from 'Yuk! dont even think about licking me!' and one down from 'custard lips, what do you mean another tooth covered in yellow-green slime was in the water bowl today.').

He was a happy chappy – his unpleasant breath alone had alerted his owner to the presence of mouth trouble. Examination revealed painfully raw cherry-red gums, protruding from which was a mess of greeny-brown teeth coated in a bread crumb like layer of tartar, delicately set in a bed of hollandaise sauce-like liquor. Now the point in telling this gruesome tale is that this mouth belonged to a dog who was apparently quite well.

After seven days on antibiotics his breath was fresher, his gums less red and he was brighter. Now fit for sedation to remove tartar and reveal the full extent of the damage, a routine blood sample was taken. This revealed that this outwardly well dog was fighting serious infection and was going into kidney failure.

Under sedation and anaesthetic Fred's teeth were ultrasonically scaled, removing the tartar and exposing dead teeth which caused little pain but slid up and down in their slimy sockets pumping infection into the circulation, causing the chronic infection and kidney damage which would have eventually polished off our hero.

Five rotting teeth lighter, Fred is now on a diet to relieve the workload on his injured kidneys and is healthier than he has been for years. He is really quite, lickable?

Give your pets food and treats that actively exercise their teeth. Like so many other things in life if one does not use them one is likely to lose them!

Make sure your vet checks your pet's teeth at least annually!

For some examples of home dental care products that are available, check out VRx Pharmaceuticals' website.

Video of ultrasonic scaling: scale.wmv (ASF/WMV2 format, 260KB).