I hate for him to lose a tooth.

"And I'm afraid to have him anesthetized.  I'm afraid something will happen."

Tooth loose(2) Hey, something did happen.  This tooth lost its attachments and was hanging by a thread, which makes it wiggle around and hurt.  It wasn't much trouble to extract this one.  The tooth ought to be the color of those two white roots, not covered wtih brown crud.  That pink dot was the only remaining attachment.  The teeth he has left are similarly encrusted with tartar.  Some of them are probably in about the same shape, but the tartar is bridging them to the next tooth so they don't wiggle so much.

Now that I've flipped this one out of the poor dog's mouth, they are going to have another family talk about getting his mouth situation handled. [Six months ago, I didn't convince them.]

4 thoughts on “I hate for him to lose a tooth.

  1. Melinda says:

    What puts people off going to the Vet for teeth probs is the price.
    I wish people who see that cute dog in the petshop window ( I really think animals should NOT be sold in petshops – waaay too easy to get ) realize that pets , like children , are expensive. Its always the poor dog that misses out.
    I do hope that family go without some fattening take-aways, save the money and go and get fido’s teeth cleaned.
    Fingers crossed!

  2. Doc says:

    You would be surprised how many people are actually worried about the anesthesia. The money certainly can be the issue, but when clients will do absolutely anything else that doesn’t require anesthesia, it’s not the money.

  3. Melinda says:

    Now that is interesting! I thought it would be the money – or do you think that is a good excuse and makes out you are not looking mean?

  4. Doc says:

    Hello, Melinda,

    There is no question that people have financial limitations. Some people really do not have additional disposable income. They walk a tightrope hoping that nothing will go wrong with their own health or that of their pet.

    This is unrealistic, yet we all do this to some extent. “It won’t happen to me” is in our minds, whether it is using the plastic to buy something we can’t really afford or riding a motorcycle or enjoying a pet without really being able to provide for its care properly.

    If you can’t afford dental care, then you ought to be doing home care to ward off the problems. Of course, if you just aren’t confronting the fact that problems can occur, you probably won’t be doing much to prevent them.

    Then there are people who just choose to spend the money on a night out with the family, or videogames or whatever.

    That being said, there certainly are people who just refuse anesthesia. One problem with this is that the animal has to suffer continually with quality-of-life issues that are unnecessary.

    The biggest problem with this is that eventually you can have a situation where the problem is life-threatening, rather than just “quality of life”-threatening. Then you HAVE to undergo anesthesia when you’re in a crisis situation, and that’s not going to be a lower-risk situation.

    So, yeah, sometimes it’s the money, and sometimes it is a failure to reach through the person’s fixed ideas to get them to confront the actual risks and benefits of the procedure.

    Thanks for reading and writing.

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