Dentistry

Veterinary dentistry has advanced considerably in recent years, with dental disease being identified and treated much earlier than previously. We now know the huge benefits this brings to our pets and there are many products and foods on the markets to help us care for our pet’s dental health.

Untreated dental disease can affect a pet’s entire body but can have particularly detrimental effects on the heart and kidneys. Early diagnosis and preventative dental care is always the best solution. However, in some pets, dental disease can advance rapidly and can be hard to detect, especially if they are not keen on showing you’re their teeth. Cats especially, can be fairly adept at evading a mouth examination!

Luckily, we can usually get a decent look here at the clinic, which enables us to, at a minimum, assess if treatment is necessary. A full, detailed, examination of any pets’ mouth, can only really be done correctly with sedation.

If your pet requires dental treatment, we will be able to give you an idea if there are likely to be extractions, but as mentioned before, examining the back of our pets’ mouths is usually done once they are under sedation or general anaesthetic.

Dogs and cats have much bigger and stronger tooth roots than we do, so extracting a large tooth is quite an intricate and skilled procedure. Frequently teeth have to be cut into pieces to allow less traumatic removal. We have dental Xray which allows us to see tooth decay, damaged or deformed roots and ensure we have removed all the large roots successfully.

It will be recommended that older animals have pre-anaesthetic blood testing and are on intravenous fluids during a dental procedure and may be kept in overnight to allow us to monitor pain, hydration and recovery. The vast majority of pets recover very quickly from dental procedures and rapidly show the benefits of a healthy mouth (much nicer for kisses!)

It is a great idea to get your puppy or kitten familiar with having their mouths examined, a bit of work when they are young will make everyone’s life easier as they grow up. Getting youngsters used to tooth brushing is the best preventative dental treatment by far.

Once your pet is an adult, depending on the breed, diet and their mouth conformation they may require regular dental treatment, we know that regular scaling and polishing of teeth prevents tooth decay and extractions.

We offer free nurse dental checks for your pet all the time.