When humans have to have dental work, we have an advantage. We can say what we’re feeling. We can tell the dentist, “Ouch that hurts when you touch that spot or I’m really scared, please tell me that it won’t hurt.” The dentist and care team can reassure us by their words and actions in response to what we tell them.
The thought of having any kind of dental procedure scares the heck out of me. I got over it after having root canals, removal of teeth for braces, and having braces put on and off.
But I’m a human, I can only imagine what it is like being a dog going in for dental work.
Imagine being a scared little dog. And your humans drop you off, hand you off to a stranger, and then poof, they are gone. You’re left there sitting in a kennel, in a strange place, with loud noises of other dogs whining and barking. Your human is not there being your voice to tell them to stop and that you’re really super scared and just want to go home where everything is familiar and quiet.
Holy crap, that is a new perspective on being scared.
That is scary. Really. Really. Scary. Okay, yeah, I’m projecting my feelings about what it is like as a dog going in for dental work.
I’m the first to admit it, prior to this week, I would’ve never been one to say pets need dental care or to have my pet go through dental work. How naïve of me I know.
I had adopted the philosophy that in the wild, dogs don’t have a dentist, so why would they need them in captivity. Don’t they have some kind of natural enzyme in their mouth to clean their teeth or something like that?
Nope, in captivity, they don’t have natural defenses to prevent tooth decay because we (I) spoil them. They don’t have to fend for food themselves by finding their own food. They aren’t out there eating the raw and natural things that keep their teeth clean while they are alive.
In the wild, they just eat raw foods instead of the lovely cooked and refined foods that we provide them in our homes. Sad to say it, unfortunately, the cooked and refined dog foods we buy and feed our dogs often contain refined sugars and all sorts of other additives.
Duh, we all know refined sugars are BAD for teeth and for our overall health.
This week was my turn to eat my words and take my dog in for dental treatments. My poor little Copper had three teeth pulled this week due to an infected deep abscess on one of his back molars. When we first discovered he was in pain, he had woken up with a swollen face and wouldn’t eat or drink or sit by me. We took him in and the vet suspected an abscess so gave him an antibiotic shot, pain medication and said to come back in a couple of weeks if he wasn’t better.
I felt so bad for the little guy. Now, I’m feeling like the worst dog-mom ever. Here I thought I was doing him justice by feeding him food he likes to eat and giving him a Greenie every day to “clean” his teeth.
Apparently, those efforts on my part weren’t enough of the right things to do to help his overall dental health. We had to take him back for surgery to remove teeth and to get the rest of his teeth cleaned.
As I’m watching him during recovery from the surgery, I’m so disappointed in myself. The poor little guy is still feeling pain from the surgery site and has areas of swelling after the surgery.
I don’t want to put him through that again. He will recover with lots of TLC on our part. Now that his teeth are all white and free from tartar build up, I want to help him by providing food that doesn’t rapidly produce tartar build up.
I’m on a new mission to prevent tartar build up from happening again and to discover if what I’ve been feeding him has been the culprit all along. It is time to debunk the theory that food manufactured specifically for pets, must be okay for them.
Oh, good graycious…there’s a lot of information out there to research. But, my little guy is worth it. He deserves to keep his pearly whites clean for the remainder of his time with us.
