Every day, you feed your pet the right food, spend time with them to exercise, and take them to the pet hospital for health check-up. I believe you are a very responsible host, but have you paid attention to the care of your family's teeth?
Like humans, pets suffer from dental diseases. If you take your family to the pet hospital for dental examination regularly and maintain good dental care habits at home, you can avoid losing a lot of teeth.
Dental problems.
2. What can be seen from the dental lesions of pets?
The initial manifestations of dental diseases are plaque on the surface of teeth and inflammation of teeth, which is called gingivitis. If your pet has bad breath, swollen gums or bleeding, these may all be signs of gingivitis.
Gingivitis can lead to periodontitis or inflammatory reaction of surrounding tissues. If not treated in time, periodontitis will lead to tooth loss and affect the health of heart and kidney. Periodontitis can make pets feel pain when eating. In more serious cases, pets will lose their appetite and lose weight.
Generally speaking, when suffering from dental diseases, the owner may not be able to make an accurate judgment by self-examination at home. So you need to take your pet to the pet hospital for dental examination.
3. What is a pet's tooth cleaning and dental examination?
First, the veterinarian will examine your pet's teeth and assess their health. Make sure that the pet's current physical condition is suitable for anesthesia through blood routine or other examinations before tooth washing. Because general anesthesia is necessary to treat tooth washing and dental diseases, the veterinarian will carefully examine your pet's mouth during tooth washing to find abnormal places, such as broken teeth, missing teeth, ulcers or tumors. Periodontal probe is used to check periodontal pocket, which is the original birthplace of gum disease. Veterinarians will use ultrasonic dental scalers and hand-held scrapers to remove dental tartar and plaque from tooth surfaces, gum lines and crevices.
After cleaning the teeth, the veterinarian will polish the cleaned teeth with a tooth polisher and rinse them with a liquid containing antibiotics, which can delay the formation of dental plaque and reduce the chance of postoperative infection. After cleaning teeth, your pet will receive fluoride treatment to strengthen existing teeth and reduce the sensitivity of exposed roots.
Your veterinarian may require one or more X-rays to assess your pet's oral health. If some seriously infected or missing teeth are found during tooth washing, they need to be removed during surgery.
4. Pet Who will clean my pet's teeth?
When you go to the dentist, the dental hygienist will help you clean your teeth. It's similar for pets. We have professionally trained veterinary assistants or veterinarians who can help your pet clean his teeth. Veterinarians will check their pets' oral and dental conditions again after cleaning their teeth, which is the same as seeing a doctor in a hospital.
In some cases, if your veterinarian finds problems with root canals and crowns, he will refer them to dental experts, who will deal with these problems through more advanced training and research.
The beautician may also help you brush your pet's teeth, but in fact, this operation can only be done by a veterinarian. People without professional training can only remove obvious large pieces of tartar by scraping. Such an operation may destroy the substance on the surface of teeth, and it does not solve the main problem of teeth, that is, the problem of periodontal tissue, so such a cleaning operation may create the illusion that the tooth problem has been solved.
5. How should I care for my pet's teeth at home?
Dental care should not only be taken to the pet hospital for regular examination, but also be carried out at home. In short, you can imagine for yourself that if you only brush your teeth 1~2 times a month, you can imagine how smelly your mouth will be.
Brush your pet's teeth, familiarize it with toothpaste first, and then start brushing slowly. After brushing your teeth, you need to reward your pet immediately.
Now you can try buying a soft toothbrush. People's baby toothbrushes are very suitable for brushing their pets, but your veterinarian may give them toothbrushes and toothpaste.
If your pet is nervous and resists when you brush his teeth, you can first apply some of their favorite flavors by hand, and then directly simulate the brushing action, so that the pet will gradually accept brushing.
After your pet can accept the behavior of brushing his teeth, use animal-specific toothpaste and toothbrush to brush his teeth. Never use human toothpaste, because it will irritate the intestines and stomach of pets and cause vomiting of cats and dogs.
When brushing your teeth, start with the front teeth, then the canine teeth and molars. Please carefully brush the gaps between teeth and other places that are easy to hide dirt and shelter dirt. Please brush your pet's teeth once every other day at the longest, so that the dog can have a good oral environment and healthy teeth!
Tips: If you want to know more about how to brush your teeth for pets, you can click on how to brush your teeth for dogs and cats to read.