Ebon just cracked a tooth. I'm not kidding either, it literally just happened. I gave him the second half of the
Churpi Chew I bought
a short time ago about ten minutes ago. As I've gotten into the habit of lately, I checked his teeth when he finished and discovered this:
 |
| That's a crack, all right, and from what I can tell it goes very deep, possibly down to the pulp. |
Luckily, his dental appointment is this Monday, but I don't even know if the tooth is salvageable. I'm going to be softening his food until it can be taken care of.
Thank goodness you already had a dental booked! Although clearly this will be an added expense...hope it all works out okay!
ReplyDeleteI hope so too.
DeleteMy dad thinks the tooth can be saved, but I don't know. I've done some searching and there are some possibilities. It will be best, of course, if I can keep it from becoming infected between now and it getting taken care of. That would make it a lot easier to save if that's the decision that ends up being made.
Aaaaand that is one of the reasons we keep commonly used antibiotics on hand.
DeleteI will be honest and say if one of ours cracked a carnassial I'd have it yanked. Dogs are not people, they do things with their mouths that people do not do, and a capped, root-canaled tooth is going to be vulnerable to those things (chewing on bones, sticks, toys, etc.)
We have IGs, and they have very problematic teeth, and almost always end up having some removed, including the big teeth. They do fine.
I just realized I have some four-year-old Amoxicillin in my "dog meds" bin next to the emergency Phenobarbatol and the parasite prevention stuff. I don't even remember what it was from.
DeleteI'm kind of waffling about whether or not to ask to try to save it. I can see both sides of the argument, both some positives and some negatives. It would probably be much cheaper to have it pulled, if nothing else.
Argh, I hate that. Both of my big dogs chipped and broke teeth recently. One of them was busted so bad the pulp was showing in three places and there was only about 1/3rd of the tooth left. The other just flaked a bit off the tip so we haven't had it yanked yet. Juneau's cost us about $650 total for the initial vet visit, then having the tooth extracted and the others cleaned.
ReplyDeleteI pushed Mom to get it pulled since the tooth was busted so bad, and I know if I hadn't, Mom would have just left it and it would have abscessed. Which is seriously gross, and worse than getting it yanked, health and cost wise.
What's amazing to me is that the crack does look so deep, but the tooth is still all there. It did bleed a bit, but only from the gum and not from the crack itself. So, to me it looks like it could possibly be cemented back together. However, I don't know very much about canine dental practices. I'm quite curious to see what the vet has to say about it.
DeleteUntil Monday, I'm keeping it clean and only feeding him soft things to make sure the crack doesn't worsen. You should have seen the animals after I mixed some kibble and water and set it on a shelf to soak. The cats were going mad trying to get to it!
Umm, yay for Nat'l Pet Dental Month?
ReplyDeleteSorry -- that sucks.
Yeah... It's nice that I'm getting a discount for his cleaning that to that, but I doubt that any further care will be discounted.
DeleteI'm starting to wonder if part of the reason why this tooth cracked is because it's on the side he doesn't chew with as much.