Dental care is an important part of your pet’s overall health. We recommend that your pet get a wellness examination every year, and at that time, the veterinarian will examine your pet’s mouth to check for any abnormalities. Dental disease can cause a variety of problems in your pet, ranging from bad breath to anorexia.
Visible tartar on the teeth
Swelling in or around mouth
Dropping food from mouth or trouble eating
Anorexia or lack of appetite
Changes in behavior
During the physical exam, the doctor may advise a dental cleaning or teeth extractions, which would be done during a separate visit. At that time, we will recommend doing pre-anesthetic bloodwork to check your pet’s organ function. Once we determine that your pet appears healthy enough to undergo anesthesia, we will start the dental cleaning procedure. Your pet will be anesthetized, and then using our state-of-the-art dental cleaning machine, we will scrape the tartar off the teeth (aka scaling), remove any teeth that are loose, broken or rotten, polish the teeth and then perform a fluoride treatment. At this point, we will monitor your pet to make sure he or she wakes up from anesthesia without any complications.
Your pet needs to be fasted for at least 12 hours prior to the procedure (we recommend removing your pet’s food at about 9pm the night before).
Your pet should be dropped off between 8:00-8:30am.
Your pet will be able to go home the same day between 2:00-4:30pm.
The anesthesia can make your pet groggy; we recommend that once you bring your pet home, your pet should be put in an area by itself, away from other pets. Also, keep an eye on your pet to make sure he or she doesn’t fall down stairs or off furniture.
Your pet can eat the evening after the procedure if he or she wants. We recommend that you feed your pet half of what they normally would be given and that you offer wet food instead of dry, as your pet’s mouth may be sore.
Your pet may go home with medications. Please follow the instructions on the medication(s) and ask the staff if you have any questions.
Your pet must have a current Rabies vaccine; if not, we can do the vaccine here.