by sands904
on 9/16/2009 at 1:37 PM
in Lance
So, we took our clumsy boy Lance into the Dental Specialist yesterday. For those of you who don't know he ran into our coffee table playing fetch and chipped his upper right canine tooth. He chipped it just far enough up to be into the pulp in the tooth which is not good. If not corrected this can lead to infection.
The doggie dentist was wonderful and very knowledgable about her profession as well a dog behavior which I have found many vets and other dog professionals are not. You see, Lance is a very scared boy when it comes to new things, people or places. She sat down on the floor in the middle of the room and let Lance get used to her while she talked to us about the procedure and our options. He gradually warmed up to her a little which was good.
Our two options were tooth extraction or root canal. Since it was his canine tooth which has a root that is about 1.5 times longer than the crown of the tooth, extraction would actually be considered oral surgery as part of the bone would also have to be removed to get the entire root. He would have to have soft food and be restricted from chewing on anything for about 2 to 3 weeks. With a root canal they drilled a small hole in the tooth and put a filler into the root which would seal it up to keep out any infection and then plug the hole and file off where the tooth was chipped. This would not require any cutting of the gums or bone removal (yay!!!).
After discussing our options with her we decided on doing a root canal to save Lance's tooth. The actual procedure only took about an hour but they kept him for about 3 hours after to let him recover and monitor him. He was very groggy when we went to get him of course and slept in the back seat with me on our almost 2 hour car ride home. When we got him home Lacey and Logan had to give him a good sniffing to make sure he was alright but then he went right into his crate to rest.
He is doing fine today. He still seems a little tired and not quite himself but he is doing well. So be careful when playing in the house!
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