Professional Teeth Cleaning

February is Dental Health month and my vet gives a 10 percent discount in the month of February. Tucker, who we rescued 10 months ago, is in need of a desperate professional teeth cleaning. I am hoping by the end of today, to make an appointment to have this done. His teeth have bad tartar build up, looks like cement, once again this is how his teeth were when we adopted him from the shelter.

I have a few questions before I call my vet and schedule the cleaning.

1.Does blood work have to be before his teeth are cleaned, my guess is yes. I am kinda of nervous

about this, since we adopted him and don't know his whole health history.

2 What should I expect. I do expect them to put him under anesthesia, anything else I should know or

ask my vet about?

I have never gone through this before so any help with this subject would be appreciated.

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Permalink Reply by Natalie, Lance &Tucker on February 22, 2012 at 7:51pm

Well, I finally made the appointment for Tuckers teeth to be cleaned on the 28th.
He is going in for bloodwork on the 24th to make sure that is all ok. The vet said to do that a couple days ahead of time but the technician who made the appointment over the phone seemed to think it was ok to do the morning of, making me wonder who was right.
Lance also has his check up appointment to see where we go frim here for the next couple weeks. He is down to 1/4 of a tablet of predisone every other day so heres hoping it doesn't increase the dose on friday. Hes still on two other meds besides the pred. This is a slow and tedious process, but hopefully we can keep his auto immune system controlled and he doesn't come up with any other ailments from his auto immune issues.

I'm really nervous about getting Tuckers teeth cleaned but is definately needed. Lets hope he wont need any teeth pulled.

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Permalink Reply by Melissa and Franklin! on February 22, 2012 at 9:15pm

both are right. You can get bloodwork sent out or you can have it done in the hospital. When you send it out you tend to get more bang for your buck (a bigger profile for less money). For Franklin they planned to send out a blood panel but the techs forgot to draw it so they just did it in house for the same price. I'd do it ahead of time just because that is what financially makes sense.

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Permalink Reply by Melissa and Franklin! on February 22, 2012 at 9:13pm

if it's done at Petsmart by the Banfield vet, there won't be any difference. I am kind of conditioned to automatically not like Banfield because they tend to just try to sell sell sell the corporations products and you end up buying a lot of stuff that's not needed. But an anesthesia dental tends to be the same no matter where you go and all that changes is the experience of the technicians who are doing the dental so if you trust your petsmart vet go with them, if you don't trust them, go elsewhere.

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Permalink Reply by Melissa and Franklin! on February 23, 2012 at 12:52pm

if the groomers do it they won't, but if the banfield vet does it, then they do. Here's a discussion I posted a few weeks ago with an excellent article on the risks of anesthesia-free teeth cleaning (not to mention the fact that it's basically worthless)

http://www.mycorgi.com/forum/topics/before-you-consider-anesthesia-...

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Permalink Reply by Sarah McC. on February 23, 2012 at 7:55pm

Is the cleaning really necessary? There's a great product out there called Vetzlife, you can get it from your vet or online, and it's tooth cleaning gel and spray. We brush Perci's teeth twice a day and they have improved dramatically in the month since we adopted her. She also gets Hartz Dentist's Best bones which you can get on amazon.com, they're not expensive, and that helps too. My vet says with the regular brushing and bones we can avoid a cleaning, which of course involves bw and anesthesia. Good luck to you.