5/15/2023 0 Comments Dog pica client handout![]() If you have pets of different ages, compare what you see inside. Open the mouth and look at the inside of the teeth and at the tongue. Lift the lip and look at the teeth, especially the back teeth. It is a good idea to become comfortable opening your pet’s mouth and looking inside. Not every pet is amenable to hands-on oral care and not every person's schedule is amenable to it either so there are some lower maintenance options that we will review as well. Home care is ideally a daily part of tooth maintenance but even brushing just twice a week can remove most plaque before it can mineralize into tartar. Expect your pet to need professional teeth cleaning every 6-12 months and expect general anesthesia to be necessary for each tooth to receive proper attention and care. Bone loss, once it starts, is not reversible.įortunately, there is a lot we can do to prevent periodontal disease and the rules are basically the same whether the teeth belong to a pet or to a human being: Professional Cleaning and Home Care. Worse still, the bacteria of the mouth can seed other areas in the body leading to infection in the heart, liver, kidney or virtually anywhere the bloodstream carries them. The tooth will be lost and the jaw bone can potentially break or even disintegrate (a serious problem in very small dogs). In short, if regular home care is not performed on teeth, plaque will mineralize in the gingival sulcus, accumulate and destroy the attachment of the tooth. Worse still, the bacteria of the mouth can seed other areas in the body leading to infection in the heart, liver, kidney, or virtually anywhere the bloodstream carries them. When this mouth was cleaned up, many of these teeth could not be saved. Plaque mineralizes into tartar (also called calculus), creating more inflammation, covering the crown of the tooth, and destroying the attachment of the tooth and the surrounding jaw bone. Tartar builds up covering most of the crown of the tooth as well as the attachment of the tooth root below the gum. If you are ever curious as to what happens if teeth go for years without brushing (or you want to show your children what will become of their teeth should they fail to brush regularly), you have only to look at your pet’s teeth and smell your pet’s breath. They do not brush their teeth nor do they floss and this goes on for years. Out of all the members of one’s family, the chances are it will not be difficult to guess who has the worst dental hygiene: the pets. Periodontal disease takes place inside the socket in which the tooth is seated. The tooth receives nutrients from blood vessels inside the pulp chamber of the tooth. The tooth sits in a “socket” and is held there by periodontal ligaments. In this picture, we see the crown of the tooth (the part we see when looking in the mouth), the root of the tooth (the part we do not see), and the attachment of the tooth to the bone. The Tooth, the Whole Tooth, and Nothing but the Tooth “Perio” means around, “dontal” means tooth: Periodontal disease is disease around the outside of the tooth.
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