Portville Veterinary Clinic / Fractured Teeth

Fractured Teeth: What do we need to do?

That little red spot can't be much of a problem, can it?

Yes it can! That's a picture of a fractured tooth. It's a common problem in pets who chew on objects that are too hard to be safe. Examples of the types of things that often cause this are rocks, steak bones, beef thigh bones, Nylabones, etc.

Veterinary dentists caution that anything too hard to hit
your elbow with is too hard for your dog safely to chew!

So, what's the problem? That little red spot is an opening directly into the vital interior of the tooth! Bacteria have already entered and contaminated the pulp cavity. Right now it's painful to the pet, feeling like a cavity does to us. It will remain that way until the tooth dies. Some weeks, months or years later that tooth is going to develop a root abscess. Many of us know what kind of pain a root abscess causes! That's something we don't want our pets to suffer from!

What needs to be done?

What do we need to do? Back in the dark ages of veterinary dentistry, veterinarians would often say, "Well, it's not bothering him now, so we'll just leave it. Let me know if it starts hurting him! We'll extract the tooth if that happens."

Thank goodness we're out of those dark-ages! As always, hind-sight is 20-20. We now know that leaving a fractured tooth in a pet untreated is cruel! It condemns that pet to suffering months or years of pain.

We only have two choices if we really care about how our pets feel.

Have a root canal performed on that fractured tooth ASAP.
Extract the tooth.

Why can't we just wait until our pet shows us that he or she hurts?

Cats and dogs rarely tell us when they hurt. They quietly suffer, often enduring pain that would have us curled up in a ball calling for our mommies without giving us even one sign! Waiting until they show us that they have dental pain usually means that they will be subjected to months or years of chronic pain before it becomes so bad that they can't hide it any more.

The reason for this type of behavior is simple: dogs and cats evolved for tens of thousands of years in the wild. Those who could not carry on life normally when in pain were killed. They never got a chance to reproduce.

Evolution has favored cats and dogs
who are able to hide pain without showing signs!

Thus dogs and cats who are experiencing chronic pain usually appear normal to our eyes. They are able to compensate for the pain until it becomes unbearable. Only then are they unable to hide it any longer.

What we do often notice though is how much better pets who have painful dental disease feel after we have treated the disease. Clients often come back with stories like, "Since he had his bad tooth pulled he's been acting like a puppy!", "She's so much more active after we pulled that tooth, she's her old self again!" or "I wish I had done this sooner, I never knew how bad he was feeling!"

To sum things up:

Broken teeth always become very painful if left untreated.
Dogs and cats feel pain just like we do, they just don't show it.
Broken teeth can often be saved with root canal treatment if taken care of quickly.
If doing a root canal is impossible, extraction is the only kind method of treatment.
Pets are much happier if they don't have to endure the constant, chronic pain that a fractured tooth will eventually cause