A dental disaster

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/03/2018 (3046 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Her enigmatic smile will never be the same.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about the mysterious whisper of a smile for which Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is so rightly famed.

No, I’m talking about the crooked grin normally sported by the newest member of our family, Juno — a scruffy, snaggle-toothed ball of fur that my daughter says resembles “bad taxidermy.”

We adopted nine-year-old Juno about six months ago, after her previous family could no longer care for her, and the thing we fell in love with was a prominent underbite and lopsided grin that made her look as if she was auditioning for the role of Adorable Canine Street Urchin in an all-dog production of Oliver Twist.

It was the sort of dingy smile that you would not expect to see outside of the British dental system and that was confirmed the other week when my wife, She Who Must Not Be Named, discovered a single tooth lying on our bed in the spot where Juno typically curls up.

So, it was off to our beloved family vet, Dr. Jim Broughton, who is the owner of Exclusively Cats Animal Hospital on Corydon Avenue, but has looked after all of our dogs for more than 30 years.

When he popped an extremely jittery Juno up on the exam table and looked in her mouth, Dr. Broughton frowned a serious frown, which — medically speaking — is never a good sign.

“Hmm,” he said, which is another bad medical sign, “this doesn’t look good.”

It was so bad that he felt compelled to call a veterinary assistant in to take a look and she not only frowned, but crossed her arms and clucked her tongue in dismay.

Which is how we ended up booking Juno — a cross between a poodle and a schnauzer, which means she resembles a throw pillow with legs — for a major teeth cleaning earlier this week. It is never fun to leave a beloved family member at a vet clinic and walk away with their tragic whimpering ringing in your ears, which is why I made my wife do it.

I spent the next several hours at home with our other two dogs, working on an entertaining and educational newspaper column while wringing my hands and waiting for Dr. Jim to call with the all clear.

When it was over, the newest member of our household had spent almost three hours under anesthesia on our vet’s operating table having her questionable choppers polished.

“It was like a sewer in there,” is how Dr. Jim described it over the phone after the operation was finished. “Basically, all of her teeth were covered in a heavy buildup of tartar, which had caused a lot of infection to build up and spread down the teeth.”

Then, our longtime vet and family friend walked me through a sort of doggie dental math session, explaining that a standard canine starts out with 42 teeth in its mouth.

“Ten of Juno’s teeth had already fallen out,” he explained, “and we had to extract 28 more, which means she’s got four teeth left. We had her under for about two-and-a-half hours, so we figured those four are fine, we’ll just leave them.”

It turns out that some of her teeth were so (bad word) rotten that they literally fell out while the vet and his assistant were attempting to clean them.

Why am I telling you about this today? Well, there are two main reason: 1) Like most dog owners, I am overly obsessed with my pets; and 2) If you have never had your pet’s teeth checked, you should stop whatever you are doing, unless you are hugging a baby or performing surgery, and visit your vet right (bad word) now.

What Broughton insisted I tell you is that it’s difficult to overemphasize the importance of keeping your pet’s teeth in decent shape.

“Dental health is one of the most important things for maintaining a healthy pet,” he told us when he popped by the house that night to give Juno one last injection to numb the pain in her mouth and help her rest.

“Dental disease, if left unchecked, can lead to a lot of significant issues including — possibly — their demise. If you don’t do anything, what’s going to happen is infection will spread into the bones of the upper and lower jaw. You can end up with organ failure.

“Early detection, early control and early prevention is the best way of preventing your dog from coming in and having 28 teeth removed.”

The good news is that Juno and her four remaining chompers are resting comfortably.

Whenever she whimpers, our two other hounds trot over to give her a good sniffing, which seems to help.

Other than the fact she will basically have to gum her food for the rest of her life, things are looking up for our formerly snaggle-toothed bundle of furry energy.

“The prognosis is excellent,” Broughton assured us as Juno scampered onto the back of the living room sofa and began howling to alert the neighbours to her presence. “She’ll be a happy, healthy little dog now.”

But, sadly, that trademark smile, the goofy grin that only a mother could love, will never be the same.

Explained our vet: “When she smiles now, her tongue hangs out the side of her mouth because there’s no teeth left to keep it in place.”

And we’re perfectly fine with that, although we’ll have to get used to the idea that she is now a doggie cliché, because her bark is definitely worse than her bite.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca