Have you ever wondered how we clean your pet's teeth? The process utilizes a trained veterinary assistant, the doctor, and approximately $35,000 worth of equipment including an anesthesia machine, vital signs monitor, pre-anesthetic lab equipment, dental equipment, and a dental x-ray machine. The adjacent photo shows a pet's teeth cleaning in progress. The whole process from admittance into the hospital, to running laboratory work, anesthesia, teeth cleaning and recovery takes approximately two hours of active time for each pet. With all these steps it becomes evident that Animal Health Center's medical care is not only a bargain, but a great way to improve your pet's length and quality of life.

We encourage those that are interested to come by and watch a teeth cleaning procedure. Not only will it be enlightening, but you will go away impressed and comforted that your beloved pet is under the care of the most technologically up to date, cleanest, most competent and caring animal hospital in the area.

Steps in the teeth cleaning procedure:

1. Admittance to the hospital in the early morning after fasting since midnight.
2. Records are reviewed by the doctor and written estimates given for the services needed.
3. Each pet is examined, weighed, and blood drawn for necessary testing.
4. A mild pain reliever and sedative is given one hour before anesthesia.
5. Isoflurane gas anesthesia is administer by a mask over the nose and pets are put on oxygen, fitted for EKG, pulse oximeter, and respiratory monitors.
6. Teeth are cleaned with ultrasonic equipment, all teeth are probed for bone loss, suspicious teeth are x-ray with owner's permission. A doctor reviews the cleaning, the pet?s teeth are then polished and have fluoride applied.
7. The pets are fully monitored during the wake up process. At that point the owners are called to inform them of the completed procedure. Follow up phone calls are made the next day to check on each patient.

An owner may only notice their pet's bad breath, but under the gum lies millions of bacteria that get into the blood stream through the inflamed gum tissue. Most of these bacteria are killed by the immune system, but some attach to heart valves, stay in the liver, lungs and kidneys and may cause bladder infection along with heart disease and liver / kidney infections. It is reported that the main cause of heart disease in older animals is bad teeth.

Cleaning the brown tartar from the teeth helps only a little while cleaning under the gum, removing diseased teeth, and polishing and applying fluoride will definitely lengthen you pet?s life and help prevent other medical problems. Many people tell us their pets seem to feel so much better after having their teeth cleaned. Pets can?t tell us when they are uncomfortable from a tooth problem so routine care is highly advisable.

Brushing your pet's teeth at home is extremely helpful and will slow down the recurrence of tartar and plaque formation. Even with regular brushing most pets need their teeth cleaned every 12 months.