It is important to maintain the health of your pet's mouth. If dental disease is not resolved, bacteria can spread via the blood stream to cause infection of the liver, kidneys and heart. Unfortunately, you can't rely on your pet showing you that their mouth is painful. Even with abcessed teeth, owners typically do not know that anything is wrong with their pet aside from the swollen face. For these reasons, regular dental care by you, oral exams by your vet and dental cleaning if recommended is vital to your pet's health and happiness.

Non-Anesthetic Dental Cleaning

If your pet has mild tartar with no gum disease, no teeth that require extraction, and has a temperment suitable to the cleaning your pet may qualify for a non-anesthetic dental cleaning. A technician from Pet Dental Services (www.petdentalservices.com)  comes in on the fourth Monday of each month and will hand scale the teeth with your pet awake. This can prolong the time until your pet will need to be put under for a thorough cleaning.

Anesthetic Dental Cleaning

Animals with advanced dental disease or those requiring extractions will need to be put under anesthesia for cleaning. Prior to anesthesia, we will run a blood panel to make sure your pet's liver, kidneys, and red and white blood cell counts are all normal. Your pet will have an IV catheter, IV fluids during surgery and high quality medications to induce and maintain anesthesia. They will have their blood pressure, EKG, oxygen saturation and temperature monitored to make sure they are doing well under anesthesia. While they are under we will take a set of oral xrays. Did you know that up to 75% of oral lesions can be missed when looking with the naked eye? Dental radiographs are a necessary part of good dental care. If your pet is having their teeth cleaned elsewhere, please make sure they are having dental xrays taken. Otherwise, a lot of problems will be missed.