Dental Care

[Guest Symphony7]

Just curious as to what other hound owners do for regular dental care. I have never had a dog that accumulates tartar like Achilles does. He had his teeth done in November and I've been less than dilligent about brushing every day like I should. So I noticed he was getting bad tartar build up again, not to mention it looks like they missed a tooth when scaling them because it was completely crusted over! It looked way worse than the rest of his teeth.

 

So I bought myself a dental hand scaler and have been slowly and carefully chipping away at his teeth a couple of nights a week. He is a saint of a dog, he lets me just hold his gums back and stands there like an angel. But after last night I feel like I have made a lot of progress and his teeth are looking pretty clean and sparkly again! Which is good because I've never had to do routine dentals on my previous dogs, they just never got tartar like he does, and I was not looking forward to a humongous vet bill and putting him under to scale his teeth.

 

Wondering what other sorts of things people do to maintain good oral health in their greys and if there is anything else besides brushing and scraping that I could do? I can't feed raw in my house, and we don't have any sort of chews or anything because of severe food allergies in the other dog, so the most I can do chew-wise are those Denta-Stix since they are animal protein-free. I don't think they do a thing but the pups seem to like them.

[Wonder]

Daily brushing

Plaque-off

Petzlife

Pork neck bones (Lucky is fed raw so gets bones daily)

[charbess]

Our grey Charlotte had the worst teeth and breath and we finally took her to a doggie dentist who did a test showing she had an auto-immune issue that was attacking her gums. We could not brush her teeth, she wouldn't let us but it wouldn't have helped, anyway. We had all her teeth pulled and that resolved the terrible breath as well. When I think of the money spent and the risk of anesthesia she was subjected to for the few years we had her I could scream. If you don't have a specialist near you at least have your regular vet check for auto-immune issues, I believe it is a simple blood test. And, a toothless grey is not as traumatic as it sounds...she lived and ate just fine until she went to the Bridge five weeks ago.

[spottydog]

In addition to brushing and a topical dental"rinse" (you don't rinse), beef leg knuckle bones really clean the teeth. Good for you to hand scale.

[XTRAWLD]

This thread just reminded me to buy some Healthy Mouth to try. I've heard it works well, and is simply an additive in the water to help keep teeth clean. We'll see.

 

In the past I have had great success with Leba II but it can be quite expensive. Super easy, just 2 squirts in the mouth twice a day, and great results in 30 days. I cannot be bothered with gel, and find that stuff really doesn't work. The problem is to just stay on top of it once you get a lot of the tarter gone.

 

Good luck!