• 80-85% of all pets have periodontal disease

• Proper dental health care can add 3-5 years to your pet’s lifespan, help prevent heart, liver and kidney disease, help prevent oral pain and bad breath

• Home dental care includes proactive steps such as brushing your pet’s teeth or providing your pet with specially-formulated chews or greenies

• Smaller pets need a thorough dental cleaning more often than larger pets

• Generally, at least once a year, your pet should receive a thorough dental cleaning by your veterinarian

As part of our continued care for your pet, given the chance we will brush your pets teeth at every visit and make a note in their patient file. At your pet’s annual examination Dr. Doolittle emphasizes and explains individualized measures that will work best for your pet to avoid dental procedures in the future.

When your pet receives a dental, it is performed like any other surgery done at our hospital.  This means your pet is given a modern gas anesthesia from which it can be quickly removed if complications develop, as contrasted with hospitals that use an injectable anesthesia that takes much longer to reverse.

Your pet is monitored with state-of-the-art electronic monitors, given warmed intravenous fluids during and after the procedure and rests on a warming blanket during the dental to maintain body temperature.  In addition, prior to the dental a blood test is run on the animal to determine if its internal organs are healthy enough to undergo the procedure.

Dr. Doolittle’s Animal Hospital has an electric/air scaling and polishing machine, as well as various hand scalers. Your pet’s teeth are polished, scaled and given a fluoride treatment during the surgery. Dr. Doolittle can also extract any teeth, if necessary.