A comparison.

I just was just grooming up my two dogs and decided I'd make a post regarding something extremely important. Two words. DENTAL HYGIENE. Yes. I am telling you to brush your dogs teeth.

Click to see larger, more detailed image.

Bleak, on the left, has significantly better teeth than Jackson as you can clearly see. There is a one year age difference between the two. I highly doubt Bleaks teeth will look like Jacksons in a year though.

Ok, so onto what I actually do with them. I got Bleak as a puppy, however I did not start brushing his teeth regularly until he was just under a year old I believe. I did this so that I wasn't accidentally brushing while he was teething. If you do this, the dog will become bitter towards getting their mouths played around with since they associate it with pain.

Jackson I got back in April and he is four and I very highly doubt he has had his teeth bruushed. Since being with his new family, aka me, his teeth have not gotten worse and have improved abit. I will still need to take him into a vet to get them professionally cleaned. He may need to be put under, which is a pretty expensive procedure.

If dogs(and cats) had their teeth regularly cleaned, then we would save a shitton of money on vet fees. What people do not realize is that so many very serious health issues start with bad teeth. These can include heart and kidney desease(and failure). When growing up, my family had a dog and he died of kidney failure, which I believe was either caused by bad teeth or bad nutrition(but that's another topic).

The fact of the matter is that we are causing not only ourselves, but the animals that become part of our lives to be predestined to a huge increase of disease. :(