Not effectively. However, I mentioned using Greenies, which are sometimes shaped like chew toys. But no, no chew toy can be effective for that. I will suggest rawhides, which can be beneficial. The same company that makes Veggiedents make a rawhide that's also enzyme-coded. That can be very beneficial because it's that chewing action that will help remove that plaque on the teeth. But you want to get an enzymatic cleaner. Chew toys don't have that. It's just a chew toy. So it's not going to help with the teeth.

Let me make this clear. This is my opportunity to rant about milk bones and milk bone-type treats. They do not help clean the teeth. A milk bone is not that much different from giving your dog kibble, and dog kibble is not designed to clean your dog's teeth. It's hard, but the way it works is that it just crushes. Many dogs just swallow it and don't even chew the food. It crushes on when they bite into it, and there's no way that will clean the teeth at all. So please, do not give your dog milk bones. They do not help keep the teeth clean. They add a lot of unwanted calories, which can be a big contributor to some of the obesity issues we see in dogs. If you're going to use something for your dog's teeth, either use Veggiedents that we have or use C.E.T. chews, which can be really effective. One last word about rawhides. I don't have any problems with people trying rawhides. Just make sure they're from North America and not Asia. If you look in the bag, you can quickly see if it's made in North America, Asia, or overseas. If it's made overseas, put it back on the shelf because there is potential for toxins in those particular products.

They can. Although it's very uncommon, they can get cavities. It's more common in cats. Cats are much more likely to get cavities than dogs.

Honestly, I think of Greenies being more like a breath freshener than an actual dental cleaning product. There's no enzyme in there that's going to help remove the plaque that's building up on the teeth. I don't know if it still exists, but there used to be chlorophyll gum years ago. I don't know if it's still around or not, but chlorophyll is a breath freshener. That's where they get the color from; the chlorophyll. If you use Greenies, think of it as a breath freshener, not a teeth cleaner. We do have a product that's called Veggiedent, which are enzymatic cleaners. It's a chewable product, and that enzyme will help remove that plaque, which is the foundation of dental cleaning. The nice thing about Veggiedents is if your dog has a food allergy or an adverse food reaction when they eat chicken, beef, or dogs that have issues with lamb or pork, it won't be a problem because there's no meat in there that could create an adverse reaction.

Let's talk about some ways of trying to make it easier. In a perfect scenario, you'll always start when your dog is a puppy, preferably if you have a puppy, but you may not get a dog when it's a puppy. It would be ideal to start when they're young. You don't want to make it traumatic for them. You do want to do it so that you can make it a little more playful or fun. If you can, get some peanut butter or use canned cheese, which we use at our clinics, to give to dogs. If you can find something that you can try to reinforce, make it a positive experience for them, something they look forward to and enjoy, that's key number one. First, you want to make it an experience that they're not going to dread because if they dread it, you're also going to dread it. If you do it in a way where they're getting rewarded for participating, that will make it a better experience for you as well. That's key number one. The other consideration is that I always start with these little finger brushes. They're rubber, and they've got little rubber bristles on them. I'd consider them just for a starter purpose. That's not something you'll use on an ongoing basis because the bristles are too rubbery. You're not going to be able to effectively get the plaque off the teeth or remove it, which is the purpose of brushing in the first place. So consider it to be like little training wheels for a toothbrush.

Next, you also want to make sure you use pet toothpaste and not people toothpaste. People toothpaste has fluoride in it. When we brush our teeth, we brush our teeth, and we spit rinse. So we're getting all that material out of our mouths right after we brushed. With dogs, they're not going to rinse. We're not going to rinse their mouth typically, and they're not going to spit. So we don't want to use fluoride because fluoride, especially in a really small dog, if you did it regularly, could cause problems with fluoride toxicity. So you want to make sure you use dog toothpaste because it doesn't have fluoride in it. Again, find a time of day when you can do it consistently. Those are the key things. First, pick a rubber bristle finger brush, then get doggy toothpaste. They're typically flavored. You can find chicken flavor, and I'm sure you can find bacon, vanilla mint, and things like that. Get something that's palatable for them. Start there.

Good question. Ideally, every day. We realize that could be a challenge for some pet owners and also some pets, but every day would be ideal. Think about it, the gold standard for people is still brushing their teeth daily. Most people do it twice a day, morning and evening. If you can do it every day with your pet, awesome. At the bare minimum, to really be effective, we need to do it at least every other day. Here's the reason. If you ever went to bed one night and forgot to brush your teeth and woke up the next morning, your teeth feel a bit mossy, as my dentist used to describe back when I was a kid. That is plaque. It's actually bacteria that are forming on the teeth. We know that in dogs, the plaque takes about two days to really adhere to the teeth. So if you're brushing at least every other day, you're going to be able to stay ahead of that plaque formation and the plaque sticking to the teeth fairly effectively. The plaque is what sticks to the teeth and builds and builds, then results in tarter after a while. If you can brush at least every other day, that's the bare minimum. But if you can do it daily, that's the gold standard.

Absolutely. Obviously, we're not going to have nearly the amount of mosquito problems inside somebody's house unless you have kids going in and out all the time or the dog's going outside, or you have a doggie door, for example, where they have a little trap door where the mosquitoes can come in. But indoor dogs can get them because mosquitoes can get in the house. Granted, there's not going to be near the risk inside the house as going outside, but it's still a risk. I know very few dogs that don't go outside. There is that one rare dog that never ever goes outside, but guess what? If you bring them to a veterinary clinic, that's going outside. Keep in mind the more time a dog spends outside, the greater the risk of exposure because the more frequent mosquito bites can get. Hopefully, that'll give you some information about heartworms. If there's one thing I want you to take away from this, it's mosquitoes, mosquitoes, mosquitoes. That's the only way they can get the disease.

That's a good question, too, because it actually gets into the core of how heartburn prevention works. What exactly is it doing now? Essentially, a mosquito will bite an infected dog and then transmit it. It will go through a series of stages of development, a couple of stages that avail within a mosquito. Then the mosquito bites an unprotected dog and squirts this larva into the dog as it's sucking out the blood, in which case, there's more larval development inside the dog. Then it develops into adult heartworms, which live primarily in the heart but can also migrate into the lungs. How does heartworm prevention work? How does that fit into this whole sequence? When we think of heartworm prevention, we think we're preventing getting it in the next couple of weeks or six months. But it actually works backward. It is working to protect or eliminate any of the heartworms, the development, or the larva the previous 30 days when we're giving the once-a-month medication. If we're giving the medication, it works backward over the last 30 days. That's why it's imperative that you've got to keep your dog on prevention once a month. Don't try to cheat and go every 45 days or certainly not every couple of months because you're missing that window when the larva can develop and go on to the adult stage. Again, if you're going to start with prevention, be consistent. Make sure you're giving the medication every single month, about every 30 days. Let's be precise, how about every 30 days? If you get it every 30 days, your dog's going to be protected. But if you start skipping days and if you forget to give it, that's when we can run into problems. That's why we do have a six-month injection, and a 12-month injection for situations where we forget to give it or your dog doesn't really like to take the chewable tablet. We also have one topical liquid for people who don't want the injection or if their dogs won't take the chewable tablets. So essentially, that's the life cycle. The cycle starts when the mosquito bites an infected dog and sucks its blood. The larva develops, and the mosquito transmits it to an unprotected dog through a mosquito bite. Then the cycle just keeps on going that way. So please, the take-home message is to make sure you give your dog heartworm medication when it is supposed to be given.

It depends on the part of the country. In this part of the country in the Southeast, unfortunately, we do see heartworms. It is a huge problem throughout the southeastern US mainly because we have mosquitoes for a very long time. To be more specific, we potentially see heartworms or mosquitoes year-round. Mosquitoes start to emerge when the temperatures get into the low 50-degree range. So even in the months of January and February, we always are going to have some days where it's in the fifties or even up into the sixties. Even in the wintertime, we expect that. We're not going to see the mosquitoes in January and February as we do in August, September, and so forth, but the point is that we do see mosquitoes year-round. We do have a heartworm risk all year round in this part of the country from about Virginia all the way south. It is a horrible issue in the Gulf states, like Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and Louisiana, because they also have a lot of low-lying watery areas. But particularly in the southeast, it's the biggest problem. Some places where it's extremely arid out west are not so much of an issue, but it does exist on the entire east coast and a significant part of the west coast.

Good question. No, they cannot. It is kind of interesting. I'm going to give a little bit of inside here. A lot of times when dogs come in, and we do a heartworm test, one of the things that I often ask as I'm getting the blood sample is if that particular pet parent happens to know how dogs get heartworms. Most of them don't know. Most people don't know how dogs get heartworms even though they're giving their medication to their dog on a monthly basis or getting the six or 12-month injection. It makes me realize that, somehow, as a profession, we have failed to educate people about this importance. I think people understand the importance of it, but it's more important to recognize how they get them in the first place because this gives you a sense of why it is a problem and a continual problem, particularly in the southeast part of the US. Quite simply, how do dogs get heartworms? Only from mosquitoes. So they cannot pass it to people. They cannot give it to another dog. Only mosquitoes can transmit heartworms from an infected dog to a dog that's not currently on heartworm prevention. That's it. Mosquitoes. That's the only way it can be spread.