Pets Benefit From Dental Care, Just As Do Their Human Companions

Oral hygiene
Published in the Asbury Park Press 4/05/04

By Tammy McKillip
Correspondent

Most pet owners would probably do just about anything to keep their
pet smiling, so it may come as a shock to read that, according to Dr.
Gene R. Wefer, co-owner and partner of Oakhurst Veterinary Hospital
in Ocean Township nearly 80 percent of all dogs or cats are affected
by dental disease by the time they are three years old.

"Virtually every pet more than 2 or 3 years of age that comes into
our hospital has some degree of dental disease -- everything from
gingivitis to severe periodontal disease, he says.

In fact, says Wefer, dental disease, which is caused when plaque left
on a pet's teeth leads to tarter development, is the most common
health problem he sees in his practice and is, with minimal care,
almost entirely preventable. Unfortunately, by the time symptoms,
such as bad breath, develop, a pet's gums and teeth are often
suffering from severe periodontal disease, and the pet's overall
health could be in jeopardy.

"There's a lot of misinformation out there that dog biscuits are
enough to prevent dental disease, and it's just not true," he
says. "Dry food may help exercise the teeth and gums, but that alone
will not prevent dental disease. There are areas of the mouth that
need to have special attention with a toothbrush to prevent plaque
and tarter from building up."

According to Wefer, people should begin using a soft-bristled
toothbrush on a pet's teeth when it is very young, in order to get it
use to having its face and mouth handled. By the time the adult teeth
come in at around five or six months old, dog and cat owners should
begin serious home care, ideally brushing their pet's teeth at least
two or three times a week.

"There are special enzymatic beef-flavored toothpastes that break
down plaque and tarter, but it's really the scrubbing and the action
of the bristles that do the bulk of the work," he says. "I tell
people to just start off by dipping the toothbrush in beef or chicken
broth to begin with and then to change to toothpaste later on, when
the pet is trained to tolerate having the brush in its mouth."

Wefer says that a dental check should be included as part of a pet's
routine physical examination, since a veterinarian can get a "pretty
good estimation of what's going on" in an animal's mouth by merely
lifting the gums to check for tarter accumulation on the front and
back molars.

"Most of the time, when you lift up the front lips and see the canine
teeth, they will be in fairly good shape, whereas the molars on the
top in the back may be in terrible shape," he says. "Sometimes, we
actually have to sedate the pet to get in there and really evaluate
the extent of the damage that's going on."

Wefer says that, like Oakhurst Veterinary Hospital, many veterinary
practices are now focusing more keenly on dental health in pets,
including sending their veterinarians to special courses to learn
about pet dentistry.

"Dentistry is an area that's very easily overlooked because the teeth
are hidden by the lips. Sometimes there's an infection in the mouth
that owners would never tolerate if the same type of infection were
sitting elsewhere on their pet's body -- on the skin or in the feet,
for instance, or somewhere visible -- but because it's hidden in the
mouth, they overlook it.

"Periodontal disease is painful. There are lots of pets that won't
chew on one side of the mouth because it hurts. Animals react
differently to pain than we do, so sometimes you may only notice a
loss of weight or a pet not being as active as it usually is.
Sometimes, that can relate to what's going on in the mouth.

"We see a lot of exotic pets, for instance, with abscesses because
their teeth are so overgrown that they are growing through the roof
of the mouth. In many of these breeds, the teeth continuously grow,
and because these animals are not eating the type of diet that Mother
Nature intended, they don't get the wear and tear on the teeth needed
to wear them down. Sometimes we'll have to put the pet under
anesthesia to reduce the size of the teeth, either by filing or
cutting them with a drill."

Wefer says one common problem in smaller breed dogs, especially the
type with pushed-in noses or short masks, is that the baby teeth
never come out on their own, which leads to a problem when the adult
teeth come in.

"You should never have a baby tooth and an adult tooth in the same
spot," he says. "Those baby teeth need to be extracted because the
teeth are so close together that the dog will develop periodontal
disease at some point, and then you run the risk of losing both the
baby and the adult teeth."

Although his practice does not currently have a board-certified
veterinary dentist on its staff, Wefer says that all the
veterinarians at Oakhurst are trained and qualified to perform many
periodontal treatments and other dental-related surgeries, including
tooth extractions, filing overgrown teeth in "exotic" pets, such as
rabbits, chinchillas and Guinea pigs, and even building a prosthetic
beak for a duck -- a procedure performed on more than one occasion by
Dr. Michael Doolen.

"We recently re-created an upper bill using dental acrylic for a duck
named Amy, whose beak had been partially bitten off by a possum,"
says Doolen. "A duck's real beak has little tiny teeth just for
grasping, but the prosthesis we made didn't have any teeth. Still,
that didn't seem to slow her down at all.

Doolen, who has been with Oakhurst Veterinary Hospital for 10 years,
says he's performed the bill-replacement procedure many times on
ducks, parrots and other birds that have sustained beak injuries.

Wefer says the veterinarians at his practice try to restore dental
health to their patients whenever necessary, using simple periodontal
treatments, but when it comes to more advanced work, such as root
canals and tooth crowning, they send their clients to certified
veterinary dentists.

For more information on pet dentistry and oral hygiene, call Oakhurst
Veterinary Hospital at (732) 531-1212.

from the Asbury Park Press
Published on April 5, 2004

http://www.app.com/life/critters/story/0,2269,937529,00.html

Posted on SHARE Yahoo group Apr 9, 2004