Why does a pet need a dentist, or how to care for the teeth of pets

What animals need a dentist?

Every­one who has teeth needs a den­tist. As among peo­ple, among ani­mals there are those who do not get out of the den­tist and who do not have a sin­gle healthy tooth, and those who almost nev­er go to the doc­tor. It depends on the genet­ic pre­dis­po­si­tion. Pedi­gree ani­mals are more like­ly to have prob­lems, includ­ing den­tal prob­lems. But it is not nec­es­sary that every­thing will be bad for such a dog, and every­thing will be fine for a mon­grel.

There are also indi­vid­ual and age char­ac­ter­is­tics. The old­er the ani­mal, the more prob­lems he has with his teeth. Pets live longer indoors than out­doors. Nature does not pro­vide for dogs and cats to live for 15–20 years. Accord­ing­ly, with age, they begin to accu­mu­late dis­eases.

How to understand that animals have a toothache?

If you go for check-ups, the doc­tor will tell you about it. It can be dif­fi­cult to fig­ure out if an ani­mal has prob­lems on its own. Often the own­ers say: “Well, he eats calm­ly — it means that his teeth do not hurt.” But the pain will become notice­able only in a neglect­ed case, when the ani­mal begins to refuse food alto­geth­er. It also hap­pens that a dog needs to have a lot of teeth removed, but it still eats and does not show any dis­com­fort. They hard­ly use their teeth when they eat, they have prac­ti­cal­ly no chew­ing func­tion. They need them for hunt­ing.

If an ani­mal lives on the street and gets food on its own, then with­out teeth it will die. But in apart­ments they do not need them for their intend­ed pur­pose. Ani­mals use their teeth when bit­ing off a large piece of food, but at home they rarely or nev­er do this.

What dental problems do pets have?

The dis­eases are basi­cal­ly the same as in humans, but the fre­quen­cy of occur­rence is dif­fer­ent. For exam­ple, cats do not have caries, while dogs rarely do. Ani­mals have a dif­fer­ent shape, struc­ture of the tooth and nutri­tion sys­tem.

What are ideal teeth in dogs and cats?

There is no con­cept of “per­fect teeth” in vet­eri­nary med­i­cine. For exam­ple, peo­ple care about how straight and white their teeth are, but ani­mals don’t care. They do not know how to draw log­i­cal con­clu­sions, and they have no con­cept of beau­ty. And this is where the con­tro­ver­sy aris­es. Many own­ers treat pets as things, because accord­ing to the law, a pet is the prop­er­ty of a per­son, in which he can change what­ev­er he wants. In my opin­ion, it is more cor­rect to think about health and, first of all, pay atten­tion to the pres­ence of patholo­gies and the qual­i­ty of life of the ani­mal. If the pet’s teeth are not very even, but do not injure him, then they do not need to do any­thing. It is impor­tant to ensure that there are no inflam­ma­to­ry process­es, plaque, stones, injuries.

If you think from the point of view of exhi­bi­tions, then the cor­rect bite is impor­tant for ani­mals there. More­over, dif­fer­ent breeds have their own char­ac­ter­is­tics. This is due to the fact that ini­tial­ly each dog per­formed cer­tain func­tions and the cor­rect struc­ture of the teeth is very impor­tant for work­ing qual­i­ties. If the pet has the wrong bite, then the experts of the exhi­bi­tion will remove it from par­tic­i­pa­tion.

How are animals treated for teeth?

To do this well and effi­cient­ly, gen­er­al anes­the­sia is required. If you are offered to treat your pet’s teeth in a dif­fer­ent way, you need to run away from such spe­cial­ists with­out look­ing back. Before per­form­ing den­tal surgery, it is impor­tant to under­go a car­diac exam­i­na­tion, tests, and pos­si­bly an abdom­i­nal ultra­sound. This is indi­vid­ual and depends on age and con­comi­tant dis­eases.

Dogs and cats are cleaned, deposits are removed, teeth are removed and stitch­es are applied. Some­times they put med­ica­tions inside the holes of the extract­ed teeth, put all kinds of fill­ings. To save a bro­ken tooth, dif­fer­ent types of restora­tion are used, human mate­ri­als are well suit­ed to ani­mals. Large dogs often get met­al crowns. For them, aes­thet­ics are not impor­tant, and this is the most durable mate­r­i­al pos­si­ble. These teeth look like iron. The instal­la­tion of crowns is not the most com­mon pro­ce­dure, but if it is a ser­vice, guard or hunt­ing dog, then the pres­ence of teeth is impor­tant for it. Some­times designs are made that fix frac­tures or dis­lo­ca­tions of the jaw.

How often should you go to the dentist?

It is advis­able to come for a check­up every six months or a year, espe­cial­ly with cats. They are very secre­tive and do not show that some­thing hurts them. In fact, their behav­ior changes, but grad­u­al­ly, not in one day or a week, which makes it dif­fi­cult for own­ers to dis­cern health prob­lems with­out a doc­tor. Then, when we treat teeth, peo­ple often notice that their cat is get­ting bet­ter, but the last six months have been bad. There­fore, cats need to be tak­en for pre­ven­tive exam­i­na­tions (not only to the den­tist), for ultra­sound and tests. Pre­ven­tion is eas­i­er than cure.

Ani­mals are also giv­en den­tal x‑rays under anes­the­sia. It is impos­si­ble with­out it, because the ani­mal does not under­stand what kind of manip­u­la­tions are tak­ing place and is very stressed about this.

How to properly brush teeth for cats and dogs?

Brush­ing cats teeth is more dif­fi­cult, because not every­one will allow this pro­ce­dure. But this is espe­cial­ly impor­tant to do if the breed is prone to gin­givos­tom­ati­tis — Maine Coons, Ori­en­tals, Ben­gals, Abyssins, Bob­tails.

Many dog ​​own­ers brush their teeth once a week — it’s point­less. To do this with a pre­ven­tive pur­pose should be once a day. Young ani­mals with­out patholo­gies or large dogs can be less often, two to three times a week.

There are spe­cial tooth­pastes with­out flu­o­ride, mint and any­thing that is harm­ful to ani­mals. They are even sold with the taste of meat, liv­er or chick­en. You need to brush your teeth only with these pastes, and you can use any brush that is con­ve­nient for the own­er, but you should choose depend­ing on the size of the ani­mal. There are vet­eri­nary brush­es — they are small­er than chil­dren’s, nar­row­er and with a thin point­ed tip, with long han­dles or in the form of fin­ger­tips.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, not all own­ers suc­ceed teach your pets to reg­u­lar­ly clean the oral cav­i­ty. For capri­cious and naughty ani­mals, there are spe­cial brush toys for clean­ing the oral cav­i­ty. They are made in the form of a spe­cial tex­ture of ther­mo­plas­tic rub­ber, with which bac­te­r­i­al plaque is well removed from the sur­face of the teeth, plus they have a pleas­ant refresh­ing smell. Such reme­dies are well suit­ed and effec­tive only in those ani­mals that have not yet formed hard plaque, since, due to its pres­ence in the pet, these reme­dies will no longer be use­ful.