DENTAL CARE
How healthy is your pet’s mouth?
Just like us, our pets need regular dental checks and oral hygiene care to keep their mouths clean and healthy.
Below shows what to look out for, and actions to take.
Healthy Mouth
- No plaque or tartar
- Normal breath
- Pink firm gums
Your pet can remain healthy with good oral hygiene and regular checks with your vet.
Gingivitis
- Some plaque and tartar build up
- Bad breath
- Inflammation of the gums
- Painful
This stage is reversible if acted upon now. Book an appointment with your vet.
Periodontal Disease
- Excessive amounts of tartar
- Foul breath
- Bleeding and a large amount of inflammation of the gums
- Loose teeth
- Very painful
- Loss of appetite
- In extreme cases, can lead to diseases of major organs such as the kidney and heart
This stage is irreversible, and can only be managed to prevent worsening. Book for an appointment as soon as possible.
Call 02920 869928 for a dental check with one of our experienced nurses.
We can help give you and your pet something to smile about!
Dentals
What are dentals?
Dentals are the process of professionally cleaning a pet’s teeth and performing any necessary extractions or restoration work to maintain a pet’s oral health for as long as possible. At CVC we have top of the range dental equipment to perform professional scaling to remove the build-up of plaque and tartar from your pet’s teeth, including reaching under the gumline, which is missed with tooth brushing alone. We are also well practiced with extractions of diseased or fractured teeth where the periodontal ligament is too damaged for a tooth to be healthy again, thus alleviating patient’s pain through extraction. Dogs and cats have a diverse range of tooth morphology – single rooted teeth we would tend to remove by raising the tooth away from the periodontal ligament, however multirooted teeth (molars etc) would often need to be sectioned with a dental drill to safely extract.
Why does my pet need a dental?
Our pets are masters of hiding oral pain. It tends to only be once we notice them going off their food or increased salivation that we as owners start taking notice. However by this point, our pet has actually been in some discomfort for what could have been months. Plaque is nasty stuff, not just for giving our pets bad breath as it is full of bacteria, but it also attacks the gumline and reduces the stability of our teeth over time. The earlier intervention in dental disease, the more teeth can usually be rescued. This is another reason why the annual health checks are important, as we can keep an eye on any developing issues, and suggest intervention at an earlier point, to minimise any pain that may develop.
Dental disease is the most common reason for needing to perform dental work, but unfortunately, we can need to perform emergency work if our pets manage to fracture their teeth too. It is worth getting in the habit of checking over your pets mouth routinely, so you can pick up any changes early on.
Here at CVC, we perform dentals under a graded structure – priced by number of extractions. The cheapest option is a scale and polish where we do not need to perform any extractions and feel our pets can have good oral health maintained. Although in some circumstances, full mouth extractions will have to be performed if a pets oral health is so compromised. We may ask to do this in two separate procedures to minimise the length of time a pet is kept under an anaesthetic for, as this too can be detrimental to their health.