More retained baby teeth.

Last summer I did a short post on a kid with 10 retained baby teeth.  What a piker.

Abby_meales2 This is Abby.  She’s not showing you much of her smile. At this point, you wouldn’t have minded seeing it, but you surely wouldn’t have wanted to smell it.  She has a lot of baby teeth that failed to move on when the time came.  She’s a little bit of a late bloomer.  At nine months old, not only has she not shed all the deciduous teeth, but her permanent canine teeth look like they are not quite fully erupted.

Double_teeth_2 The reason you wouldn’t have wanted to smell her breath is that all these extra teeth are pretty bad about catching a lot of junk.  She had wads of thread and hair jammed between the over-crowded teeth.  Some teeth are coming in crooked.  There’s gum disease, and a suprising amount of calculus (tartar) accumulation, considering that she’s only nine months old.

Baby_teeth_2 Here are FIFTEEN baby teeth that should have come out on their own.  Three of them were just crown-caps with the roots dissolved, but they were still in place, and still trapping crud.  The tooth with bloody roots at "10 o’clock" is the opposite number to the little cap at "2 o’clock".  It was pretty solid, but it had one bad root, and was crowding three other teeth.  It left a big enough hole that we had to suture it.  That’s a little unusual for a baby tooth.

New_smile_2  Here’s part of Abby’s new smile with a normal number of teeth.  Her mom is committed to keeping her in shape, and I’ll bet that her smile just gets better. I don’t think she’ll ever end up like this dog.

3 thoughts on “More retained baby teeth.

  1. Christina says:

    My dog has had really bad breath for a few months now. Its so bad that it smells like rotting flesh! I just noticed last night that she has a decaying hole inside her cheek, like she had a cut that got infected. But shes eating fine and doesnt seem to be in pain?? What could be the problem?

  2. Doc says:

    Hello, Christina,

    Sorry to be so late replying, but I am on a trip with limited access to email.

    I hope that by now you have seen your veterinarian. I cannot tell you what is going on, and it sounds serious to me.

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