They always say it’s better and easier to prevent rather than treat disease. Practicing preventative methods is always best and easiest to incorporate when your pet is at a young age. These preventative methods include daily brushing of teeth, feeding specially formulated dental diets such as Royal Canin Dental Diet or Hill’s T/D, and feeding them specially designed treats such as Medi-Chews. Brushing your pets teeth is the most effective method of removing plaque. Feeding a dental diet will only remove some of the plaque and does not do as good of a job as brushing.

Once dental disease has progressed you can no longer prevent you have to treat. This usually requires extractions to remove diseased teeth to prevent further damage to other teeth and bone in the mouth. Also a dental cleaning and scaling is required to remove any built up tartar, because once it builds up it cannot be removed via brushing or feeding dental diets.

If you think your pet may have dental disease or you want advice, or have questions about your pets dental health just ask one of your veterinary professionals.