Cleaning teeth
- Thread starter Denaluvscorgis
- Start date
raw bones and chunks of meat/cartilage. 
quigley was close to a professional cleaning after eating wellness dry food for a while (when i was still feeding kibble) and it did a bad number on his teeth
in addition to feeding lots of raw, meaty bones, i bought a set of scalers and worked on the worst spots every couple days and eventually his teeth became clean again.
now that i don't feed kibble anymore (other than as a treat now and then), there are no problems at all.
quigley was close to a professional cleaning after eating wellness dry food for a while (when i was still feeding kibble) and it did a bad number on his teeth
in addition to feeding lots of raw, meaty bones, i bought a set of scalers and worked on the worst spots every couple days and eventually his teeth became clean again.
now that i don't feed kibble anymore (other than as a treat now and then), there are no problems at all.
Just a couple of questions here on the raw bones...
1: are you supposed to freeze the bones before using them...
2: what size or how much for a small dog, (10 to 20 lb's)
Odo has had raw bones but he would throw up afterwards, does this mean i should not give them to him??
Edit: quigley's teeth look very nice....Odo's look a little worse than your before pic. I thought about the cleaning at the vets , but i worry about putting him under..Just scares me. I brush as he will let me...but it is a fight.
1: are you supposed to freeze the bones before using them...
2: what size or how much for a small dog, (10 to 20 lb's)
Odo has had raw bones but he would throw up afterwards, does this mean i should not give them to him??
Edit: quigley's teeth look very nice....Odo's look a little worse than your before pic. I thought about the cleaning at the vets , but i worry about putting him under..Just scares me. I brush as he will let me...but it is a fight.
Denaluvscorgis - i feed a home prepared diet that consists mostly of raw bones and meat, but also a few cooked items and healthy table scraps.
necterine0 - if your dog's teeth are really bad and don't clean up well in a reasonable time frame from feeding raw bones, i would definitely consider a professional cleaning and then just pay close attention and keep up with maintenance afterwards.
anesthesia is very safe and much more controlled these days and i would rather opt for a good cleaning instead of letting things go too far, since the toxins from inflamed gums affect the whole body, including organs like heart and kidneys.
as a sidenote, i never experienced such a bad buildup on any of the other commercial foods i fed in the past (e.g. innova, canidae) and attribute much of it to the fact that wellness was an oven baked food that crumbled very easily and stuck to the teeth very badly.
and i'm still kicking myself in the butt for not paying more attention to what that food did to my dog's teeth. live and learn, now i know better and check teeth on a daily basis.
all this happened before 2004 by the way - the images just have that copyright notice because that was the time i first used them in an article i wrote.
necterine0 - if your dog's teeth are really bad and don't clean up well in a reasonable time frame from feeding raw bones, i would definitely consider a professional cleaning and then just pay close attention and keep up with maintenance afterwards.
anesthesia is very safe and much more controlled these days and i would rather opt for a good cleaning instead of letting things go too far, since the toxins from inflamed gums affect the whole body, including organs like heart and kidneys.
as a sidenote, i never experienced such a bad buildup on any of the other commercial foods i fed in the past (e.g. innova, canidae) and attribute much of it to the fact that wellness was an oven baked food that crumbled very easily and stuck to the teeth very badly.
and i'm still kicking myself in the butt for not paying more attention to what that food did to my dog's teeth. live and learn, now i know better and check teeth on a daily basis.
all this happened before 2004 by the way - the images just have that copyright notice because that was the time i first used them in an article i wrote.
Three members of my family go to the same clinic... one vet who had seen all our dogs asked what we did to keep their teeth so perfect. I used to brush my litters teeth, just to get them used to it before they went " Home". I've never had to brush my adult dogs teeth or had them cleaned. I feel kibble over canned food , plus the RAW bones makes the difference . Chip has beautiful teeth at 8 years old.
those steak bones are too small to be safe and too hard to really make a difference.
for really small dogs, raw lamb ribs, lamb shanks and pork ribs are great. also chicken wings and necks. the best "cleaning action" comes from bones that aren't too hard to be consumed but still require a decent "workout".
i'm not a big fan of giving the middle part of weight bearing bones of larger animals (e.g. cattle, deer, elk and so on), since they can break teeth. not even wild wolves risk their teeth on such bones.
for really small dogs, raw lamb ribs, lamb shanks and pork ribs are great. also chicken wings and necks. the best "cleaning action" comes from bones that aren't too hard to be consumed but still require a decent "workout".
i'm not a big fan of giving the middle part of weight bearing bones of larger animals (e.g. cattle, deer, elk and so on), since they can break teeth. not even wild wolves risk their teeth on such bones.
I remember a program of a Vet on the TV from years ago. He said never to give your dog a bone. He said it was the worst thing that you could give a dog.
They swallow the sharp pieces they manage to break off, but then they cannot digest them. They end up caught in their intestines. Lodging and causing severe pain. It is only after an opperation that they can be removed.
Rib bones would be terrible for this.
I would say if you want to clean the teeth then get an electric tooth brush like this one Here
It made sense when he showed you the x-rays on the TV show.
They swallow the sharp pieces they manage to break off, but then they cannot digest them. They end up caught in their intestines. Lodging and causing severe pain. It is only after an opperation that they can be removed.
Rib bones would be terrible for this.
I would say if you want to clean the teeth then get an electric tooth brush like this one Here
It made sense when he showed you the x-rays on the TV show.
Vince, cooked bones are the ones that splinter like that, not raw bones. People just assume its all bones when a vet says don't feed them. Most vets are also against a raw diet because the only nutrition training they get is seminars done by dog food companies. Vets make a good commission off of selling food in their office, why would they promote a diet that they can't make money off of.