Last week while we were playing with Aspen, Scott noticed there was something on her tooth which turned out to be a crack and a large cavity. Although we try to get her toys to clean her teeth and brush her teeth, it appears as if our attempts at her oral hygiene have been not as successful as we would have liked. (Where is my friend Dr. Hannah Van Bibber when you need her?!)
We ended up taking her to the vet on Saturday morning where they told us that she would either have to have the cavity drilled out and filled with sealant (best case) or they would have to extract the tooth (worst case). We were definitely not too pleased to hear that the tooth might be lost (Especially since it is one of her canine teeth and missing those teeth can effect the ability of the dog to hold things in their mouths). In order to take care of the dental work, they were going to have to 'put her under' which of course costs a lot more than you want to pay but, we had to do it for our pooch. After some discussion, we decided that since she was already 'going under' it might be more cost effective to also have her spayed at the same time they were doing her dental work. That way we wouldn't have to pay for the anesthesia twice. The doctor assured us that it would definitely be less to do both at once and after evaluating the many estimates they gave us, we decided to go ahead and have them do both procedures.
We dropped her off at the vet on Sunday morning (they couldn't get her in on Saturday while we were in) and I picked her up on Monday morning. Luckily they were able to save the tooth! She was so excited to see me but was not too active due to the pain she was still experiencing from the spay.
After crying the whole way home, we finally got her in the house and settled. I really had never seen her so calm and relaxed before. She just put her head on my leg and let me scratch her head for about 20 minutes before falling asleep on my feet. I still feel so awful watching her with the big cone around her head (so she won't lick the stitches).
The Dr. told us that it would probably be about 2 weeks before she will be able to return to normal activity. She already seems to have a lot more energy than she did when I first brought her home so the hard thing is going to be trying to contain her energy and get her to rest.
We are so excited to have Aspen back home with us! It is amazing how lonely it gets without her around!
1 comment:
OH! Poor little thing! If only I knew something about dog teeth!
I'm glad that they fixed it! I have a friend in dental school that I sit with that used to work at a vet and his job was literally just to brush dog's teeth, who would've thought?!
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