Dr. Cindy Charlier: Taking Care of Your Pet’s Teeth

00:00:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're listening to in the Vets Office with Doctor Josie Horchak. Hi. Everyone, welcome to in the Vets Office. I am your host, Doctor Josie, and as always, we have Shannon here. It's so good to be here.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: And honestly, I've been wanting to be in the room when we've had pets, because we're in the Vets Office and you brought two very cute friends with you today.

00:00:33
Speaker 1: I did. I brought two of my dogs. There's one at home. If I brought all three, i'd be mass chaos. I mean, I've got room on my chair. I could always squeeze when I think that one's bigger though, right, he's like one hundred pounder. Okay, I might need a bigger be a tight squeeze. But yes, I have Saya and Biggie here and we're just getting them kind of used to the office the Vets Office today because they're coming back next week. The pet psychic is coming to read them. Oh okay. I wanted them to kind of get a feel for just being in the room for the podcast life.

00:01:04
Speaker 2: So if you hear any little noises, it's not doctor Josie and I it's not dogs. They're not farting, it's Biggie snorting. Yeah, that's why she brought her dogs. I didn't bring a pet, so I can't use that excuse. So today that we have one of your friends who's a dentist on right.

00:01:21
Speaker 1: Yes, doctor Cindy is going to be here. Really, she's amazing. I will talk about all things dentistry for cats and dogs. But before doing so, I thought we would kick it off with a really great case of the week. Oh okay, I have a good one. This is what happened. This was a fun, sort of fun, fun for me, maybe not for the owner's story. We had a dog come in. She I think she was like a four year old Golden Retriever, super cute, one of the classic breeds that loves to eat things that they shouldn't.

00:01:55
Speaker 3: Ah.

00:01:55
Speaker 1: Yes, And the girlfriend of the owner brought the dog in and the dog had been profusely vomiting, not wanting to eat. So we take an X ray and lo and behold, there is definitely something in her in her intestines that we have to go in and get out. It's obstructed, it's not moving. So I explained to the girlfriend, Hey, we need to do somewhat emergency surgery to get this object out.

00:02:21
Speaker 2: You couldn't see what the object was on the X ray, Like there was the one time when you were like, is that an accordion or not an ad tambourine accordion a tambourine amine, So you couldn't see what its.

00:02:33
Speaker 1: When it's like a cloth, like a soft tissue structure, you can't really make it out on X ray. So a sock can look like underwear, a wash cloth can look like a towel. It's very hard to tell. But I knew it was something soft like that. Okay, So we go in, we get it out, and it's a pair of black lacy panties. Oh no, and we I always like to save them and throw them in like a sterile bag for the owner, just to be like, hey, this is what your dog likes to eat, like here, so that they wear them again. Exactly. I don't recommend wearing them again, but I mean, you do you.

00:03:06
Speaker 2: You do you if you're short on you know, thongs, here it is, hey, underwh is expensive.

00:03:11
Speaker 1: Underwear are really expensive even though they're very small. You're like, should I save that? Yeah? Yeah, okay, so you bagged it up. Yep, we bag it up. At this point, the dad has now arrived, the owner, and so we have the girlfriend and the owner sitting in the room. I come in. I say, all right, you know, we'll call our Fluffy. Fluffy's doing great. Here is what she ate And I show them the underwear and the girlfriend was like, those aren't mine? You know whose are those?

00:03:39
Speaker 3: No?

00:03:40
Speaker 1: Yes, no, And I was like, I'm just gonna moon walk my way right out of here. I'm just gonna let you too deal with this. So yeah, I just you know, I was like, I gotta go. Did you and ran away? Yeah, I'm not saying for that. Did you have like do you have cameras in your No? I wish I would have seen what what all ensued. I think there was some like yelling coming from the room. To be honest, it was. It was heated, to say the least. She had to be in the middle of that. Hey, she was like, I need my dad to know, or I need my girlfriend's dad. I don't know. She needed them to know. She's a truth seeker. Hey, thank goodness for dogs.

00:04:13
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, And what was the atmosphere like when they walked out of the office.

00:04:17
Speaker 1: That's the part that I don't deal with. They go out, they pay, they talk to their receptionists. I'm like, my job here is done. My hands are clean of this. We have to be a fly on the wall, I know, but you'd be surprised. There's a lot of veterinarians at the same story. So, hey, if you're a cheater, watch out for those ponies laying around.

00:04:34
Speaker 2: Don't have a dog that eats underwear exactly, or don't be a cheater.

00:04:38
Speaker 1: That's also a really good that's the bottom line. Yes, don't be a cheater.

00:04:41
Speaker 2: Way, that is a really interesting something I would never think would happen, is like, that's how your girlfriend finds out that you're the cheater because.

00:04:49
Speaker 1: Your dog ate the girl's underwear exactly. Unreal.

00:04:52
Speaker 2: Okay, well, hopefully we don't have any questions from fans that have to do with, you know, their dogs eating underwear of someone that is not there. But we're going to get to some listener Q and as. Yeah, let's do it all right.

00:05:04
Speaker 1: What's up first?

00:05:05
Speaker 3: Hey, doctor Jesse, my cat throws up every few months? Is this something I should worry about?

00:05:10
Speaker 1: I get this question all the time from owners. Cats can be This is not a scientific term, but I say puky like they just like to throw up sort of randomly. So I had a great mentor that had this rule of three that she taught me, And what that means is if your pet is throwing up three days in a row, three times in one day, or they have three issues going on at once so they're throwing up, they have diarrhea, they're not wanting to eat, then it's like, hey, you need to get them seen. Otherwise I don't get two worked up about it. If it's like a just ap, like a little throw up here or there, it's not the end of the world. I will say, if your cat like never throws up and then starts to throw up like once every month or so, you might want to look into that. But if they're not meeting that rule of three, I don't lose too much sleep it.

00:06:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I feel for you because we have a very puky cat at home, and he's fine, he is healthy. He just usually likes because he has a little area in our garage where he goes out, and then when he comes in the house, he's like, oh, you know what, I'm feeling, like, I have to throw up.

00:06:14
Speaker 1: Now yeah, and then he does yeah, why not right in the foyer. Oh yeah, yep, with.

00:06:17
Speaker 2: My toddler running around, and I'm like, you stay over here, do not. But it is a thing like he's We've had him looked at a bunch of times because I was in that panic mode too, of like is there something.

00:06:25
Speaker 1: Wrong with him?

00:06:26
Speaker 2: And our vets said the same thing. Obviously, Now we will bring Murphy to you. Maybe you have something different. But he just likes to puke.

00:06:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, they puke and they have hair balls. So those are of those gotta love cats, all right. Do we have any more questions that we want to listen to? Hey, doctor Josie, I thought my puppy had all of her adult teeth, but I just realized that she still has two baby teeth that haven't fallen out yet. What should I do? Should you do anything? This is great? This is on theme because our episode this week is all about dentistry. This is really common, especially in our small dogs. We find that, for whatever reason, a lot of times they'll have baby teeth that don't fall out on their own, and this can be a huge problem if they don't if we don't take them out. So if they have retained baby teeth. We take them out at the time of their spe or neuter while they're under anesthesia. Okay, I've seen pets where we didn't catch it or the owner just elected not to have them taken out, and it is so gross. They get like hair and food and like just disgustingness wrapped around those teeth, and they can get pretty diseased. So yes, you can absolutely do something about it. We'll take them out at the time of spae or neuter. So is there an age that they should have lost all their baby teeth by? Yeah, typically around six months of age, they have all of their new adult teeth. These little guys, like are your keys are maltesees. They can hang on to some baby teeth about nine months or so, but if they're still in there around nine nine, especially twelve months, they got a out.

00:08:00
Speaker 3: Okay.

00:08:00
Speaker 1: Well, good to know.

00:08:01
Speaker 2: And I feel like a lot of those questions that people have to do with dentistry are going to be answered in our guest that's on today. Because I had a dog that always had issues with her teeth, and I feel like if I had have known some things prior to getting her. She was a friend Sheie who just don't have great teeth. Yeah, it probably.

00:08:18
Speaker 1: Would have saved her a lot of dentist trips. Absolutely, And I'm so excited about our guest today in the VETS office. We have my friend and my mentor, doctor Cindy Charlie are joining us. Doctor Cindy is a VET that was like me in general practice for quite a while and then she decided to pursue a residency and become a board certified Canine and Feline veterinary dentist in oral surgeon. She's really gone on to become the most saw after dental guru really in the vet world, and she has spent years going all over the country training veterinarians about vet dentistry. She taught me everything I know about vet dentistry, and she has such enthusiasm for the subject that you know, is amazing and really helps educate doctors and owners and she's just it's contagious. So I'm excited to have her here today. Awesome, All right, let's talk about teeth with doctor Cindy. Hi, doctor Cindy, we are so excited to have you in the VETS office today.

00:09:25
Speaker 3: Welcome, Thank you, happy to be here.

00:09:29
Speaker 1: I know I mentioned a little bit in my intro, but doctor Cindy was a general practitioner like I am, for almost twenty years, and then she decided that she wanted to be a Board certified veterinary dentist. Can you explain what exactly that means for the listeners?

00:09:46
Speaker 3: Sure? I always call it my midlife crisis. So what I realized early in my practice career was that nothing had a big impact on how my patients felt than to work in their mouths and eliminate world discomfort. And so I had an opportunity to become a specialist. Just like as a person you go to an oncologist or radiologist or internal medicine specialist, all those specialists exist in the world of veterinary medicine also, and so I went back to become a board certified veterinary dentist. So there are probably about one hundred and sixty of us or so in the United States, not very many. It's a relatively new specialty in veterinary medicine. But I went back and did that because I felt it gave me an opportunity to really impact patients' care.

00:10:38
Speaker 1: And I think a really interesting thing that listeners may not know until they listened to this podcast, is that in veterinary medicine, it's very different than in human medicine. When pets come to their general practitioner, we really do what we feel comfortable doing until we're like, this is maybe above my pay grade. I'm going to send them to a specialist. So at any given moment, we can be an ophthalmologistist a cardiologist. What are some of the things that you typically see that general practitioners are sending to you rather than doing themselves.

00:11:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the greatest thing about being a specialist is we have an opportunity to triangulate. So it's the veterinary specialist, it's the general practitioner, it's the owner, and it's the patient in the middle. So there's three of us putting our heads together to be as smart as we can about providing the pet with the best care. So some of the common cases that I would have referred to me would be a pet with a fractured tooth for a root canal, a pet with a oral tumor a cancerous tumor to have treatment for that, a dog that got hit by a car that had a fractured jaw, a hat or kitten that was born with a cleft palate. Like kids are born with cleft palates, puppies and kittens are sometimes born with that. Also, patient that may be a high risk anesthetic patient that the general practitioner isn't comfortable working on. So those types of cases that are beyond what the general practitioners coforable working on and often get referred.

00:12:10
Speaker 1: I think what would be fun to do is, you know, ICEE patients, Every single day, I'm doing an exam from toes to nail, toes to nail, nose to tail, uh and a big part of that is doing a really good thorough oral exam. So a lot of times we're talking about dentistry in general practice, and I thought it'd be kind of fun to role play what I'm hearing owners say to me on a daily basis and then hearing what you have to say back. And this is not to make fun of owners or listeners like this is it's our job to educate you and you just don't know what. You just don't know, So that's what that's what we're here for. So the very number one thing that I hear when we talk about oral health and dentistry is you know, doctor Josie, I never brush my dog's teeth growing up. We never had any issues. And now you're recommending a teeth cleaning are dental for my pet and it's so expensive, hundreds of dollars, maybe one thousand dollars, Like, what is going on here?

00:13:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, so years ago, we really didn't pay much attention to the mouth. Even when I graduated from veterinary school, I didn't learn much about dogs and cats and their teeth and oral discomfort. I learned that dogs and cats had teeth, but that was about it. So we've got a lot smarter in veninary medicine as we've gone on, And what we know now is that oral disease is a huge source of discomfort and pain for the patients. And very seldom will you or did I have a patient come to us or the owner come to us and say, my dog's mouth is painful, my cat's mouth is painful. So that hidden source of discomfort is what we're actor to try to treat before the dogger cat stops eating. And in order to do that, we have to put the patients under general anesthesia. Our patients don't just open their mouths and say, ah, clean my teeth and do a complete oral exam, so general anesthesia, preoperative lab work, providing the best pre anesthetic evaluation that we can, providing monitoring during anesthetic event. All of those things cost money and require talented people on our team to assist us. And so yes, doing a dentistry procedure under general anesthesia can be expensive. But if we make it part of our pets annual care, if we do an annual procedure, then that could be less expensive over time. Instead of ignoring the fact until we get to the point where the jogger cat isn't eating and they've got a tremendous amount of discomfort and we have to impove a lot of their teeth to a lot of oral surgery. That becomes more expensive.

00:14:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think you know, owners just don't know on the back end that there's so much that goes on. It's not just a teeth cleaning like you said, it's we've got all those nurses that are helping with you know, getting them ready for surgery and inducing them, intimating them. It's just like all the things that would happen to humans the human hospital. So there's a lot of talented people involved. There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. And then it's not just a dental cleaning. We're taking full mouth X rays, which is a huge diagnostic tool. I'll maybe let you expand on that a little bit. And you know, cleaning is a kind of belittling what we do because we use high speed hand tools to really clean those teeth and then we're probing them to see is their disease that we can see with our eye and around the gum line. I mean, there's a it's quite a process and it's not just a dental cleaning.

00:15:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the word dental. Historically we've used the word dental to describe what we're doing, and that totally under estimates the time, skill, and talent needed to complete the procedure. So a comprehensive oral and radiographic evaluation under general anesthetia is probably better wording to describe it to clients. It's not just getting your dark tea cleaned. It's not what you think the groomer may or may not be able to do. There's a lot more to it.

00:16:07
Speaker 1: The other thing that I find the owners signed surprising is when we have to do oral surgery. So we'll say, hey, you know, this tooth is fractured, it's disease. I'm going to extract it. And I think they think, ah, you're just gonna pluck it right out, And what they don't realize is like there's a lot of work on the back ends there. Can you explain us a little bit, just a quick synopsis of what oral surgery looks like.

00:16:30
Speaker 3: Sure, that's no problem. So the most commonly fractured tooth and teeth and dogs get fractured way more commonly than teeth and cats. And the dog, the most commonly fractured tooth is the upper fourth freemo, which is one of the major chewing teeth. So as a dog goes to chew, they put a huge amount of force between their upper tooth and their lower tooth, and if they chew on things they shouldn't, and that can be a question we addressed later, then they can fracture that tooth. And fractured teeth if they have pulp exposed, which is the nerve of the tooth, are super painful and the only two options for how to treat that tooth or to do oral surgery to remove it or to refer to a venerary dentist to have a root canunt treatment. Ton and other teeth that are disease with periodonal disease often need to be removed. There's a lot of other disease processes and teeth that cause us to need to do oral surgery. In dogs. The only time that we can just remove the tooth or what I call extracted tooth. If the tooth is super loose, like a little bit of Yorky it's fourteen years old, that has horrible periodonal disease, that has all loose insizors. Those the teeth in the front, sometimes we can just remove those, but the vast majority of cases we need to do oral surgery. So we need to open a up the gum tissue, We need to remove bone. If it's a tooth that has more than one root, we need to cut the tooth into sections. We need to take each toothruth out one at a time, clean out the tooth sockets. Man they say that comes you flap the clothes over and put futures inside the mouth that will dissolve with time. So those procedures for one too sometimes can take us up just thirty minutes or more for just one of these big teeth in the dog.

00:18:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not easier, requires a lot of skill and my brow is sweating sometimes, like it's a lot of work and it costs money. You can touch on this a little bit. I think A really a big thing that I hear owners say often is you know, I want to do this. I'm just really nervous about putting my dog under anesthesia or my cat under anesthesia. What do you say to that.

00:18:35
Speaker 3: You should be I'm always nervous when my dog or cat has to go under anesthesia too. So the thing we want to look at is the risk versus the benefits, And when we're working in the dogger cat's mouth, the huge benefit is that you can properly diagnose and treat your dogger cat's oral disease and get rid of any painful teeth that they may have. So when we're done with the dentistry and oral surgery procedure, your dog or cat goes home with a pain free mouth, and that's one thing that we can count on. So general anesthesia in dogs and cats and in our patients is the same as it is with humans. So we go through a complete evaluation of the patient prior to general anesthesia. We do preoperative lab work, bloodwork to check kidney and liver function, make sure they're not anemic. We sometimes may do a chest X ray. We may ask for an evaluation from a cardiolosis if there's a heart murmur. So we do everything we can to make sure that that patient's properly prepared for anesthesia and we can minimize the risk, and we know if there's pre existing conditions, how to adjust our anesthetic protocol. And then we choose drugs that are based on that individual patient. It's not always a one size fits all. We use pre medication which has pain medication in it, and that it's pain medication on board before we start any kind of painful procedure. Our patients breathe in gas anesthesia, just like you would if you went to the hospit for a procedure. They're intubated, so they're airways protected, and they're monitored by our nurses. And that monitoring involves lots of different things. It involves the nurse actually being there to monitor your dog or your cat while it's under anesthesia, and it also involves us monitoring their heart rate and rhythm with any kg. We monitor the amount of oxygen in their red blood cells with a pulse oximeter. We monitor the amount of carbon diox they breathe out, and we monitor their blood pressure. They're on ivy fluids during the whole procedure. They have patient warming devices that help them keep warm because their temperature goes down during the procedure. And like I said, they have a dedicated nurse who's going to monitor their anesthesia. So we do everything we can to minimize the risk of our patients under anesthesia. Doctor Josie, both you and I would be pelling a big fat life. We looked at our people and said, there's no risks. There's always some risk, but we do everything we can tip certainly minimize that.

00:21:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the reality is the overwhelming majority, overwhelming majority do great. And I always think like and you know, I'll say to the owner, Okay, well if we don't do anesesia and we do nothing, we never clean your dog's teeth. I see these pets. They come in, they're ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fifteen years old, and they have teeth that are rotting out of their mouth. They are We even get something called too, through abscesses where the infection is so bad around the root of the tooth that it starts to come out of their cheek and have draining tracks on the side of their face. I mean, they are in what I would have to imagine is probably excruciating discomfort. And so although there is some risk involved with anesesia, I think that that greatly outweighs the downside to not doing it and the discomfort that they potentially would be going through for years and years not having that dental procedure. And like you said, we do. I don't think people realize all the things that we do on the back end that, just like in human medicin them are monitoring them so closely. We're doing pre op and postop and all taking all these measures to make it as safe as possible.

00:22:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, when I was a younger person, but younger, my dad taught me that if I had changed the oil in my car every three or five thousand miles, whatever it was, then that my car would last longer. And the same thing goes for your pet's oral healthcare. If we address the issue when it's minor, and we're addressing issues when the dog or cat has just ginger itis, just inflammation of the gum tissue, and we're putting those patients under anesthesia to evaluate what's going on underneath the gum line. We're light years ahead than if we wait and say no, no, no, not a big deal, not a big deal, not a big deal. And then you and I are having conversations with pet parents that are yes, the risk is high, and yes your pet could die, but we don't have any choice right now because your pet's not eating. So I really don't, I mean neither of us like those cases where we're looking clients at the eye going oooh, and we're thinking, wow, I wish would have dressed this sooner, because now our anthetic chris is up higher because now we've got a sick patient on top of a really badly diseased amount. So I think that changing the oil in the car is a way better idea for maintenance than wait until the car breaks down.

00:23:16
Speaker 1: I'm really good about getting my pet stentals, but I'm really bad about getting my car oil changed. I probably gotta work on that, you know. I think this is an interesting point. You said that you know, when they come to us and they're not wanting to eat anymore because they're in so much discomfort that tends to be fairly rare. I would say pets are so amazing in the sense that their fight or flight animals like, they don't oftentimes show us when they're feeling discomfort. Specifically cats, I find and so a lot of times I'll find a fractured tooth, or I'll find a tooth with periodonal disease, and the owner will be like, oh my god, I had no idea. They're not acting. I don't think they're uncomfortable. I think they're totally fine. What do you say to that, I.

00:24:01
Speaker 3: Say that dogs and cats can't raise their pawms say their mouth hurts. We see cases all the time where if it was us and we fractured a tooth and had pulplex boths, we've become calling one eight hundred my favorite sensus in a nanosecond, like we don't even have to think about it, and anybody out there who's had a fractured tooth knows what that feels like. So doctor cats, like you said, doctor Josie, their main thought is to survive, where you go to the bottom of the pack, so they a lot of times will even shift how they're chewing. If they've got a fractured tooth, with puplex bows or severe periodonal disease or oral masks, they'll shift and chew on the other side of their mouth. So when we're doing our thorough oral exam, we may see that on the side that's painful, there's a lot of calculus or brown are tartar build up and decide that's not painful. It is pretty clean because they're chewing on one side. So I don't know. There's nothing I've done in my entire career. In my careers a long one that's had a bigger impact on how my patients feel. And you've got clients come in after their doughter cat has a dentistry procedure and they say, oh my gosh, doctor Josie, I feel so badly that I didn't do this when you told me last year or the year before, because now my dog or my cat's a brand new dog. My dog's acting like a puppy, my cat's not hiding under the couch. So our pets do everything they can to mask discomfort, but there's nothing I've done this. It's had a bigger impact on how my patients feel and work in their mouth and fix their mouth.

00:25:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really has hands down. Probably I mean, I think you've rubbed off on me a little bit, but it's definitely one of my favorite parts of my job. And oftentimes when I'm bringing a pet in for a procedure, it's a healthy puppy that I'm spaying, and they leave and they're you know, they're painful and the owner's kind of dreading it, and or they're getting a tumor removed. But dentistry is so special in that they're coming in it's almost immediate gratification. I'm sure they may be sore for a day a couple days after, but their whole demeanor and personality can can change night and day with getting an alcae tooth removed. So it's really, yeah, for sure, really awesome as a veterinarian to see.

00:26:17
Speaker 3: I had one client come in. This is just to share a fun story. She came in and I was doing a two week recheck after I'd done oral surgery and her cat and her KTT. It's very severe periodonald disease and we removed a lot of teeth and the owner was really worried about the procedure and about anesthesia, and she came in for that recheck and she looked at me, said doctor Simmy, and I said yeah. She said, my cat's a different color. And I said what she said, my cat's a different color? I said, your cat looks orange to me. Its color was when it came in. No, no, no, like, my cat's a different color. Well, what had happened was that the mouth was so painful that had stopped grooming, and so in fact, in her perception, that cat was now a different color because the cat had resumed grooming and taking care herabae coat, and that cat's tall coat was totally different to that owner.

00:27:03
Speaker 1: It's amazing. I love those stories. It makes it all worth it, for sure. So what are some things that owners can be doing at home? And I mean, of course this does not supplement in getting a dental procedure done with your veterinarian. But what can they be doing to improve their pets oral health at home?

00:27:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, perfect, Let's just talk about a couple of things. Plaque. So what's plaque? I think is owners, it's important for you to know what black is. When you wake up in the morning and you run your tongue across your teeth and it feels like you have socks on your teeth. That's plaque. It's clear, you can't see it. You go in the bathroom and take two brush it goes away. Okay. So that's awesome when that black goes away and you feel better about things. But what happens in three to five days for people and per dogs and cats, that plaque becomes calculous. That's that hard brown stuff. And once that hard brown stuff accumulates on their teeth, you can brush to the cows come home, it's not going to go away. Okay. So the goal with doing home care is that in between the anesthetized sedi history procedures that we're going to do for your pet, we would like to control that plaque and have it not become that calculus. So to do that, the best option is to brush your daughter cass teeth David, And most people look at me and go, yeah, right, that I'm going to do that. And the fact of the matter is it's a choice by the owner on whether you make that a priority or not. We have a dog, true story, who adopted him from the Chicago Anti Croulty Society. His name's Crosby and he was about eight months when we adopted him. And he has a lot of things that he's not perfect at, but this one thing he's perfect at. Before his dinner every night, when we say yet kay, he comes running into the kitchen to get his teeth brush because he knows after he gets his teeth brush that he gets to suck. And so he gets his teeth brush once once a day. And that's the key with dogs and cats, is the brush once a day and make it fun. And you can ask your veterinarians about how to do that. But it's just like teaching your dog to sit or your cat to chase the ball. There's lots of things we ask our pets to do and teach our pets to do, and brushing teeth is certainly possible if we make it a priority. We only need to worry about the outside of the two surfaces. Their tongue does a pretty good job taking care of the insie. If you look at me or doctor Josie and you go, there is no way I'm brushing my daughter cat's teeth. There's other things you can do. There's diets, treats, twos water additives that help decrease plaq and or calculus. When you brush your teeth tonight, pet parents, look at your toothpaste has the ADA Field acceptance on it. That's the American Sental Association. There's a group in veterinary medicine called the Veterinary Oral Health Council VOHC, And if you go to www dot VOHC dot org, there's a list of products that have the boh S Field Acceptance and those products we know do how help decrease plaque and org calculums.

00:30:05
Speaker 1: So you mentioned earlier that the most common tooth we see fractured in our dog patients specifically is that big premolar up top, and a lot of times they fracture it by chewing on hard things at home. Bones, toys. What kind of chew toys would you recommend that our dogs should be playing with at home.

00:30:26
Speaker 3: That's a great question, doctor Josie, And I'm really glad you asked that because as pet parents, we go into the pet store, and right in the front bin at the pet store as we walk in our big huge knuckle bones and femur bones and pig ears and cow hoofs, and it says your dog must to these because that's what they did in the while, when in fact, those are some of the biggest culprits of causing fractured tea. So what I tell pet parents is when you go into the pet store or trying to do your dog a favor, what you want to do is every single thing you pick up, you want to say to yourself, south will this give when my dog two's on it? Or will it not? If the answer is yep, I can compress it, yep, it bends, yep, it'll give, then spend your ten ninety nine. But the answer is no, it's not going to, then put it right back in the bin. So things that most commonly cause fractured teeth in our patients are bones, natural bones, raw hide, bones, figures, cowhos, deer, antlers, rocks. So if your dogs are rock goes to the bottom of the lake and picks up rocks and throws them up on the bank, that's probably not awesome. In addition, tennis balls can be bad. If they chew on tennis balls all the time, they won't fracture your dog's seat, but that outer green surface is really abrasive and they'll sometimes cause your dogs teeth to wear down, so if you can bend it or compress it, they can have it. If you can't put it back out on the shelf.

00:31:49
Speaker 1: That's great. I think that's so helpful. And I know you mentioned the VOHC, but that website has been so helpful for me. I have a five year old Chihuahua at home, and he also was a rescue. He is a feisty little guy and if I tried to say dente's and brush his teeth, I'm losing a finger, no doubt about it. So we do our best. There are some really great dental chews and additives on that website, and of course he gets his annual dental procedure with me. But yeah, not every pet is up for brushing. But with that said, if you have a puppy or you have a young dog, desensitizing them and getting them used to it from the get go is going to save you so many headaches down the line.

00:32:33
Speaker 3: Yeah. And the other huge advantage to brushing your dogger cat's teeth is that you're in their mouths every single day, so you know what's normal and you know that they're not pulling away from you when you're trying to brush their teeth. And I've had clients who brush their dogger cat's teeth every day. And I had a cat mom call me and say, oh my gosh, I brought brush Welter's teeth every day, and I want to brush his teeth today. And he pulled away from me and he's never done that before, and he came in. They brought him in and we looked at it. Sure enough, he had a tooth that was painful for him that we needed to treat. For a dog that has a discolored tooth, owners brushing their teeth, it's just like yesterday, this tooth is white. Today it's not white, it's red. There must be something wrong, and they get on the phone call orald tumors. We find one way earlier. So there are advantages besides just making the teeth look good and delaying the odset of periodontal disease, of having you in the pet's mouth on a regular basis.

00:33:32
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, thank you so much for coming on today. This is such a big part of what I do every day, and I think it's so important to educate our listeners and create awareness around it because as you and I know, it is such a huge part of our pets health and happiness and comfort, and so there's really nobody better for us to have here today to answer these questions. So I really appreciate you coming.

00:33:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, doctor Josie, Thanks for the opportunity. I'm always happy to talk to pet parents about teeth and oral healthcare. It's it's one of my passions. And like I said, there's nothing that will make a bigger impact on how your pet feels then to make sure you take care of their mouth.

00:34:11
Speaker 1: Awesome, Well, thank you so much, you bet all right. Awesome.

00:34:18
Speaker 2: That was so great to get to have doctor Cindy on here and learn so much. I feel like we don't often talk a lot about dentistry with our pets, so it's really really awesome.

00:34:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, and it's so important. I mean, as you all have learned for their overall health and luckily for her, doctor Cindy is pretty much retired now. So if people have questions about their pets oral health, I recommend talking to your vet and then certainly check out that Veterinary Oral Health Counsel that we talked about, the VOHC. You can google that and it'll pop right up. And it's got lots of great resources to learn about what you can be doing at home for your animals.

00:34:54
Speaker 2: And she obviously is a close friend of yours two and like you said your mentor, so you can also you know, submit your question too and ask doctor Josie and she can get them to her for sure.

00:35:03
Speaker 1: Absolutely.

00:35:04
Speaker 2: All right, now onto one of my favorite parts of the show.

00:35:10
Speaker 1: All right, paw and order for this week, numero uno. I would not put coconut oil on my pet or in its food. I don't know what is going on with coconut oil, but it is like skyrocketed. People love it.

00:35:24
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:35:24
Speaker 1: I feel like there was like maybe three or four years ago it really.

00:35:28
Speaker 2: Became big and then people kind of, you know, it was like fizzled off a little bit, and now we're obsessed with coconut oil again. I love using it. And I will say my vet, when my friend she had like a really dry nose, she used to tell me to put on her nose. So now I'm learning we should not do that.

00:35:42
Speaker 1: I think it's moisturizing. So if it's like a dry piece of cartilage like the nose, sure, okay, But when they have cuts or scrapes. People like just like to slather it on and it's like an ointment. Yeah, it's like an ointment. Or if they're like, oh they're coats dry, I'm gonna rub them in coconut oil and then grease theme up and they come in and they can like frying egg on them and I just it clogs their pores. There's really no like medicinal properties to it. I'm just I avoid it. It also causes diarrhea if you feed it to them. So yeah, because I've.

00:36:16
Speaker 2: Seen people like take a heaping spoonful and just they love it, slap it on there, they love it, So don't feed it.

00:36:22
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, there's really no benefit to coconut oil.

00:36:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, other than the fact they're very slippery, exactly greasy if you want it all over the ay.

00:36:30
Speaker 1: Good to know. Number two. I would absolutely positively not get pet insurance the day after my pet has an emergency we or even after the day after they're sick. This is so important if you are getting a puppy or adopting a dog, get pet insurance right away. Right the second they have an ear infection, they're vomiting, they have diarrhea that becomes a pre existing condition, and the insurance companies will not cover. Yeah, it's just like insurance for people. Yeah, like you can't do that. Just like and I have owners coming in being like, can you just leave this out of the medical note, like basically asking me to commit insurance fraud. And I'm like, I love you guys so much. You're like no, but this is one boundary I will not cross.

00:37:10
Speaker 2: And honestly, I was that person that wished I had have just, you know, like done it and gotten peture, got pet insurance from the beginning, right because I had a Frenchy Boston mix and like they are prone to having health issues. But I was like, I'm not gonna need it, so I didn't. And let me tell you, I really wish I had have had some pet insurance.

00:37:29
Speaker 1: Yes, it's it's really come a long way, and it's so important. I mean, veterinary medicine, the diagnostics, all the things that we do can really add up and be expensive, especially if it's an emergency. So get pet insurance right away. It is absolutely positively worth it.

00:37:44
Speaker 2: Yes, I am saying do it for yourself because it will save you in the long run.

00:37:49
Speaker 1: It will all right, what else we got on here.

00:37:50
Speaker 2: Uh.

00:37:51
Speaker 1: Last, but not least, I would not feed my pets out of a plastic football. A lot of people get in trouble today. A lot of people don't realize this. It's not the end of the world. But I see a lot of my patients come in with chin acne. So they have like acne just like you and I, little red pimples and irritation on their chin. And it's because plastic and ceramic bowls tend to it's a great place for that bacteria to grow. So stainless steel tends to be a little bit better for that. And even still, I would wash your pets food bowls two to three times a week. They're just like us. They need to have clean surfaces to eat off of, and it keeps them from getting sick. And nobody wants chin pimples.

00:38:32
Speaker 2: Oh. I feel like my dear sweet Phoebe, who's up above right now looking down at us, is like you could have saved me from all those years of acne, mom, And like no one has ever told me that. Like she, I always would keep her bowl clean. But she's a frenchie, so she's like getting right in there right the dishes, so yeah, yeah, you don't realize that would be really nice to know.

00:38:52
Speaker 1: That's why we're here. Nat, thank you for helping me.

00:38:55
Speaker 2: And future puppy that I get and you bring years in right now is make me want to get one right now. But stainless steel, I feel like it's also just like humans, like, using plastics really aren't great for us or anybody, so stainless steel is the way to go. What about the glass like ceramic ones, I.

00:39:12
Speaker 1: It really for me, stainless deal is the best. Then if you need to go to glass, ceramic and then last not leads to the plastic, but stainless stale far and aways the best. Okay, cool, good to know.

00:39:20
Speaker 2: Well, I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and any questions, like I said, you can ask if you have it about dentistry or anything to do with your pets, you can ask doctor Josie in our show notes. You can just submit your questions.

00:39:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, or follow me on Instagram. Feel free to dm me It's at doctor Josie Vett. And then we're a brand new podcast, y'all. We need all the likes we can get, so definitely like us. Leave us any feedback you have anywhere that you listen to podcasts, We appreciate it. All right, we'll see you next week.

00:40:01
Speaker 2: She