Hospital and i am going to introduce you to one of our very cute clients.

This is lopey.

She is an eleven year old maltese who came to us a couple of weeks ago to have her teeth cleaned.

Yes, i know she is eleven years old and a lot of people think that older dogs shouldn't have their teeth clean but it's so important to have these guys evaluated and checked out because poor lopey here actually had an absess in one of her teeth and we ended up having to go in and pull it, bt it is so important especially for these older dogs to get their teeth cleaned every year and sometimes every six months because it doesn't just help the health of the tooth and the gums, but it also helps their heart.

These guys if they don't get their teeth cleaned regularly they can have issues with absesses of their tooth, they can start having some murmurs in their heart based on the bacteria released from their teeth when they're starting chewing.

So it's important for these guys definitely to get their teeth checked out.

If your dog is having trouble eating or you notice that he's just dropping food or he's just not doing all that well or if you see him lose weight, then it's really good to bring him in and let us take a look at him and just see what's going on but also to check his teeth and make sure if he's got good healthy gums or if he's starting to get something like an absess....... so this is actually a picture of one of our other patients that we did a dental on so you can actually see all the tartar buildup around all the teeth, and it's these teeth back here that we really worry about with absess formation because what this tartar does just like in our teeth it pushes up on the gums and actually allows bacteria up under there which can cause tooth decay and tooth rot.

So this dog came in for a dental and so this is the before picture.

This is what her teeth look like after her dental.

So you can see nice and pretty white teeth.

We do check them to make sure there's no cavities or if there's any root exposure and we pull those.

You can see here we had to pull one tooth on this dog.

Uh, but you see how just important it is just to get a basic dental done..... these guys really really um need their teeth checked every year or even twice a year.

So if you're having any issues with your puppy or your cat at home, please bring them to us.

I promise you, you'll be glad you did!

Announcer: wcbi animal health with dr. emerson was brought to you by emerson animal clinic in west point.