This is something which is of a lot of importance. You should make sure your dog's teeth are clean. Below is a picture of unclean teeth. You can see the residue build up near the gum line. This causes several problems, the main two being gum disease and tooth decay.
Once this happens your dog will be in a lot of pain, and it will end up costing you a lot or unnecessary vet bills. Pulling a canine tooth can be in excess of $100-150 a tooth. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not pay that.
The picture below shows a dog with clean or cleaner teeth. Notice how most of the residue is gone. This is the minimum cleanliness your dog's teeth should be, even as a puppy. You can achieve this in a couple of ways.
Brushing your dog's teeth: If you'd like to take the time and the effort to do this, this is an option. To us, it's entirely unnecessary because it's more of a headache and unless you have a very calm, submissive and mild tempered dog, it will be struggle and you likely will not get all their teeth clean.
The other is to let them chew on something. We like to use size appropriate raw bones for our dogs. The dogs get an excellent source of nutrition, the contents on the bone are obviously not harmful to their health, and they love it. They will chew and grind on these bones, and they will clean their teeth themselves.
You can also allow them to chew on a size appropriate hard dog toy if you'd rather. These don't add the nutritional value, but as far as cleaning, they can accomplish the same thing. Dogs will love doing this as well.
Having a bone or a toy to chew on can also help with destructive behavior as it gives the dog an outlet to chew and satisfy their drive.
Hope this helps, and let's give our dogs a happy, healthy smile.
Maligator Kennels
No comments:
Post a Comment