The biggest tip that I have is to start slow. Don't go on day one and think that you'll be able to fully brush your dog's teeth. Start it as a little bit of a game. Let them play with the toothbrush, bite on the toothbrush, put doggy toothpaste on it, and let them lick that off and get used to it. Then start with just a tooth or two and do a little bit each session until your dog is used to it.

Just think of yourself. To take care of your teeth, you brush them a minimum of twice a day. So I would say, to make a difference in your dog, you must brush them daily. That being said, anything is better than nothing, so the more you can brush them, the better off your dog's teeth will be, and the further apart their dental cleanings will be needed. The more you can brush, the better.

That's a good question, and we can't always tell. We do a lot of things to increase the safety of our anesthetic procedures. With a dental cleaning, we do require pre-anesthetic blood work, which checks for infection, blood counts, the functions of the liver and the kidneys, and the pet's electrolytes. It does a lot of things to tell us how safe it is to put them under anesthesia. It doesn't tell us whether or not they might have a reaction. Just like in people, there are complications associated with anesthesia, but they are few and far between.

Depending on what the situation is, if a dog needs a tooth extracted or some other type of procedure, we will send home pain medicine. We don't typically do any kinds of surgical procedures here without appropriate pain medications, so your dog might go home with pain medicine. If the infection in the dog's mouth is really severe, sometimes we'll start antibiotics either at the time of the dental or, in some cases, we'll even start a few days before the dental to help prevent some of that infection from going into his or her bloodstream while we're cleaning their teeth.

This is true. I'll be honest; it's a terrible idea because, with dogs, more than 80% of dental diseases will be under the gumline where you can't see it. I've even had cases, I've had my own dog who had a normal-appearing tooth on the outside, and once we got up under the gumline and we could take those x-rays, we realized there was disease under the gumline that necessitated that tooth being extracted. So it's really important for them to be under anesthesia so that we can get a complete exam and do a complete cleaning because, again, most of the diseases come up under that gumline.

We use a couple of different types of anesthesia for these procedures. All of our anesthetic procedures have an IV catheter placed, and they all get some calming medicine at the beginning of the procedure. Once we are ready to begin the procedure, they get IV medication to make them go to sleep. Then once they are asleep, we place a breathing tube down their trachea that continues to deliver gas anesthetic during the procedure. It's very similar to what you would have in a human medical procedure. While they're under anesthesia, we have technicians and assistants that monitor things like their heart rate, their respiratory rate, their blood pressure, and the percentage of oxygen, and they also deliver IV fluids while they're under anesthesia just to help keep them stable for the procedure.

Some people don't like dental cleanings either, but unlike people, dogs are not going to sit still for us to clean their teeth. When we do a dental cleaning on a dog, it's more like a deep cleaning that you would get if you go to the dentist. We get underneath the gum line, scale, and polish those teeth. So it's not the most pleasant procedure. Also, when we do a dental cleaning here at Haywood Road, we take x-rays of all of their teeth, and this has to be done under anesthesia because, again, they're just not going to sit still for those x-rays.

If your dog has just ingested something and he gets sick shortly afterward, you have to be suspicious that it might be some toxicity. There is a poison information center that you can call, and they have board-certified veterinary toxicologists there that can answer any question you have about toxicities.

That's a big question because we use elimination diets to find food intolerances and food allergies. An elimination diet's a big process that usually takes a minimum of six weeks, classically 12 weeks of feeding something that's very specific.

For sure. The most common cause of a loose stool in your dog is an abrupt change in diet, so that's the first question I usually ask people when I'm presented with a patient with loose stools, diarrhea, or vomiting.