How to Prepare a Puppy for a Dental Exam

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Elise McMahon with ExpertVillage.com and in this video series we are going to be talking about dental care for your dogs. If you would like to find out more about my services you can visit my website at www.canineheadstart.com. So in this short video clip we are going to be talking about dental exams and how you prepare your dog for dental exams. What we want to do is we want to go quite slowly and ideally you start off when the dog is a puppy like this. Good girl. We want to be able to comfortably go into the dog’s mouth and take a look at it. if we start off slowly and encourage the dog and reward the dog along every step we are going to have better success working with an adult dog. So we want to start getting the dog used to getting a dental exam. First we want to have them used to having their head held and manipulated, so I am just going to take her head in my hand and I am going to move it this way and I am going to move it that way. Then I am going to let go and I am going to reward here. Good job, very good girl and give her a praise and let her know that she did a good job. Next what I want to do is I want to be able to see her teeth, so I am going to get her attention back to me and I am just going to open her mouth and close it again. Now we are working quite slowly here because we do not want the dog to come up against stress or tension or to fight against us because we do not want it to be a struggle. So now I am going to see if I can look at the side of her mouth so I am just going to take her head here and I am going to take the side of her mouth, then pat her and reward her. Remember when you are teaching your dog how to have a dental exam we are not really concerned at this point with actually looking at the teeth, we want to just be manipulating the mouth and praising the dog afterwards. One thing you can do is pet your dog on the head and pick up the mouth like this on either side, pat your dog on the head. We want them to think that this is a normal routine thing and not something that they should be afraid about. "