anyone here have dental work performed on their dogs?

[glocke12]

I noticed last year that my 5 year old weim Zoey had chipped part of her lower right canine tooth...it was a small piece that was missing, no pulp was exposed, vet wasn't concerned, and I wasn't concerned.

The other week I noticed that more of it was chipped, a full 1/3 is now missing, and it is clear that part of the pulp cavity has turned necrotic. Also, the tip of the upper right canine is missing and the pulp is exposed there.

My primary vet didn't seem too concerned about this latest news. Dogs chip teeth all the time. SHe said too keep an eye on it, and if it starts bothering her we may have to pull one or both, but she did say I have options to treat these NOW. These options are largely cosmetic, and basically include drilling out the necrotic portions of the pulp cavity and filling them.

I took her to a a vet who does doggie dentistry, and recieved a qoute of around $1200.00 for this. He also made it clear that in the case of the lower canine, he may get in there and find that root canal needs to be performed...($$$$). IF that were to be the case I would just opt to have the tooth pulled.

I feel terrible about this, I love my dog, and hate to see her lose teeth at such a young age (5 years old). I have the money to do this, but am hesitant to for the following reasons:

1) Not a fan of putting my dog under anaesthea
2) Its largely a cosmetic procedure, not life or death situation
3) no guarantees...vet could get in there and find the tooth is too far gone, or he could fix them and she could end up breaking them again next year.

need advice MR people.

 

[SMDBill]

I have 4 dogs, all of them rescued at different times. One of them is the sweetest male dog I've ever seen, but he had bad teeth. Our vet will pull teeth without taking the dog to a specialist so we opted to have it done since several were just floating in the gums and not really adhered to the bone any longer. It was $600-700 if I recall. That work wasn't really optional because if he had lost them on his own there could have been a built up infection that we wouldn't have known about beneath them.

I've never gone the doggy root canal path, but it does sound very expensive. however, for a canine, that's more of a critical tooth so I think it's different than what mine needed. They use those to pull, bite, chew, etc. Not an easy call but to have cosmetic work done for such a high cost only to possibly need a root canal on the same tooth...ouch! That's a lot of money but you can't really just let it go either. Whether to pull or treat....not an easy call on that.

 

[glocke12]

I have 4 dogs, all of them rescued at different times. One of them is the sweetest male dog I've ever seen, but he had bad teeth. Our vet will pull teeth without taking the dog to a specialist so we opted to have it done since several were just floating in the gums and not really adhered to the bone any longer. It was $600-700 if I recall. That work wasn't really optional because if he had lost them on his own there could have been a built up infection that we wouldn't have known about beneath them.

I've never gone the doggy root canal path, but it does sound very expensive. however, for a canine, that's more of a critical tooth so I think it's different than what mine needed. They use those to pull, bite, chew, etc. Not an easy call but to have cosmetic work done for such a high cost only to possibly need a root canal on the same tooth...ouch! That's a lot of money but you can't really just let it go either. Whether to pull or treat....not an easy call on that.

actually the canine teeth arent really needed in pets. they are mainly used for catching and bringing down prey, thats why they say its mainly cosmetic.