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When Your Dog Needs a Teeth Cleaning |
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2007-01
This article may appear self-serving and biased but in fact it is giving the facts. Next time you sit in a dentist's chair for a teeth cleaning, remember everything that is done during the teeth cleaning process. Scaling all the teeth may come first. In other words, removing all the plaque (waxy stuff) and tartar (mineralized stuff) from the outside and inside surfaces of all teeth both above the gum line and below the gum line is done in a meticulous manner. Any dental hygienist will tell you that it is just as important, if not more important, to clean all debris from under the gum as it is to remove all the debris on the teeth above the gum. The next step is to measure the pocket depth between each tooth and the adjacent gum. If the depth is too extreme, additional measures may have to be taken to prevent tooth loss. Finally, polishing the teeth is done to smooth their surfaces. Tartar builds back up at a slower rate onto a tooth surface if that tooth surface is smooth rather than rough.
If your dog needs teeth cleaning then general anesthetic is usually required in order to do a proper cleaning as outlined above. If the patient is awake during the procedure then cleaning under the gum line, measuring the depth of the pockets between gum and teeth, cleaning the back surfaces of the teeth, and polishing the teeth properly is impossible. The reason that I feel like I must write an article about this is that there are nonprofessionals who clean dog's teeth with the dogs fully awake and feel they are doing pet owners a service. I believe that they are doing the pets and pet owners a huge disservice. They charge for their services, give the owners a false sense of security that their pets have had a proper dental procedure done, and do very little to help the dental hygiene of the patient. As a matter of fact, they could possibly do more harm than good to the patient if the enamel is excessively scratched during the procedure. The people performing the service have no special training. Their only credentials are that they are brave enough to go into a strange dog's mouth with teeth scaling instruments. At my veterinary practice, only certified animal health technicians and licensed veterinarians perform the dental cleaning on the patients. They have all had specific training both in school and since graduation on the proper way to perform dental prophylaxis on our patients.
I have seen first hand the mouths of patients after such a dental procedure was done without general anesthetic by an untrained individual. Would you let such a person clean your teeth? This type of service is truly a rip off. Nevertheless, pet owners will often utilize these services over a proper dental procedure done through a veterinarian to save money and avoid general anesthetic. In this case, you get what you pay for. Do your pet a favor and the next time you go to your dentist for a routine cleaning, ask the dentist or hygienist about the proper dental cleaning procedure. Then ask yourself if your dog (and cat for that matter) deserves the same high quality dental care. If the answer is no, maybe you should rethink having a pet for the sake of the health and quality of life of the pet. |
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