Dental Health in your Pets

Providing Dental care to your pets is an important task in Pet caring, because Dental diseases are frequent in most of your dogs and cats especially tooth and gum diseases. According to a report by American veterinary society, 80 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cats are affected by oral diseases by its 3 years of age. Your dogs or cats teeth should be white or just a pale yellow and its gums should be a light pink in color and it should be smooth.

The beginning symptoms of an oral disease in your cats or dogs are the formation of a plaque or a tartar in their mouths. If proper care is not taken then these plaques or tartars builds up which leads to red or swollen and tender gums, bad breathe, and bleeding in their gums, which can be a lot painful. Your pet can normally resist this pain and gives no sign of the disease, but you can understand it by discomfort, depression and dullness. You can also find these diseases, by a change in chewing habits in your pets and pawing itself on its mouth. Normally cats don’t show any symptoms unless it is much serious and a threat to its life. They eat well even if there is pain in their mouth, they never paw at their face, and also it is very tough to identify its disease by it’s breathe because normally the food they eat also smells the same way. But these oral diseases can cause severe threat to the internal parts of the body of your cat and irreversible damage to its internal body parts. So you should be careful in its health measures and should make sure to take your cat to a regular check up to the veterinarian at least once in a year.

These oral diseases may also lead to other diseases which can damage other organs of your pet like its heart, kidney and liver and may lead to other health problems in your pets. It may also be a symptom of the deficiency of immune system in your pets, especially in your cats.

Many pet owners become nervous about the fact that their pets needs to go through the process of anesthesia for their dental check ups. You can also make sure to take a blood check up for your pet in order to know the kidney and liver function and other health problems before the anesthetic process. This will help your vet to know the pet’s health status and customize the need of anesthesia.

You should make sure that your pet is in pink of health with regular medical checkup of your pet by a good veterinarian especially when you come across any symptoms of oral diseases. You can also begin a dental care regimen by yourself to your pets by obtaining proper suggestions from your vet. It can include brushing your pet’s teeth and providing them with effective diet which helps to combat plaque and tartar. You can also get products sealed by the Veterinary Oral Health Council which helps to control plaque and tartar in your dogs and cats. You can schedule regular check ups by a veterinarian in order to help him to monitor the progress in your pet’s dental health.