Thread by @thebikingvet

My neighbour thinks I am mean to my dogs because I won’t let them chew on bones. But here’s the thing: I spend most of my mornings doing dentistry on dogs and cats, and I’d like to share what I see all too often.

A #VetMed Thread. TW: Surgical/Dental descriptions and images

Teeth are an amazing example of evolution. You can tell so much about an animal’s diet (or more accurately about the diet of their ancestors) from their teeth. Dogs teeth are mostly about grabbing, piercing and slicing.

And dogs do love bones. They are tasty, and fun to chew on, and when all is going well, they do a pretty good job at keeping those nice big teeth clean.

The back teeth (the last upper pre-molar and the first lower molar) are like an evolutionary pair of scissors. They are sharp, cross over each other, and have basically evolved to slice through tissue. They do a really good job at this.

The problem arises when a dog tries to chew through something hard, something that you really can’t slice through, like a bone. That puts a huge lateral force on the crown of the upper tooth, and it can pop off a large slab of the crown, exposing the pulp cavity underneath.

This is called a “Slab Fracture,” and is one of the more common reasons that dogs have to have a tooth extracted. It is painful, because the pulp cavity is exposed, and it is prone to getting infected.

Often times, that slab remains held in place by the gum tissue, hiding the pathology, and the pain goes unnoticed for a long time (dogs are wonderfully stoic creatures, and don’t complain much). 😢

The tell-tale sign is often that one of those pre-molar teeth has considerably more tartar than the other.

But underneath that slab, is an opening into the pulp cavity (that’s the slab sitting on the gingiva now, and the pink spot below is the pulp cavity. You can stick a probe down that canal, but I wouldn’t do it, because it is painful, even for an anesthetized patient)

And below the gum line, infection is setting in around the root tip (you can see the black halo around the root tip (upper right) on the right hand photo, that’s bone loss thanks to bacteria at the root tip)

Once there is infection at the root tip, the only thing to do is to remove the tooth. Did I mention that it is a big tooth, evolved for slicing through tissue? That means it has very big roots, to hold it in place and resist the forces created.

It’s a 3 rooted tooth. The white parts are the crowns, the red parts the roots. These are neither easy nor enjoyable teeth to remove (especially because, until they broke, they were nice, healthy, functional teeth). And because of all that, they are also expensive to remove.

So, if you ever listen to one thing I say, it’s sell you car and buy a bike. But if you listen to 2 things I say, the 2nd is, never give your dogs ANYTHING to chew on that YOU wouldn’t be willing to be hit in the kneecap with.

(That includes, but is not limited to bones, rocks and sticks).

And yes, wolves in the wild chew bones. But most wolves in the wild die at a young age from a variety of issues, including periodontal disease.

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