How to Brush Your Dog's or Cat's Teeth

Series Summary

As 'man's best friend,' there is a welcomed obligation for pet owners to care for their dogs, and every pet owner knows that this can be a full-time job. Our dogs lovingly weave their way into families, and much like a child that encounters the occasional accident, dogs can find their way into trouble as well. With that in mind, it's important to take care of dogs through grooming, veterinarian visits, health, nutrition, exercises and proper training. A healthy and happy dog usually makes for a happy pet owner. In this free video series, a veterinarian demonstrates how to take care of a dog, including tips on hygiene, grooming, medication and preventative care. Discover how to brush a dog's teeth, how to check a dog's heart rate, how to clean a dog's ears and how to determine if a dog has ringworm. With these tips and this information, any pet owner will be able to keep their dog healthy.

Video Transcript

"Let's discuss how you can brush your cat or dog's teeth. The first thing you need to know about brushing pet's teeth is to keep out of harms way. Their teeth are very sharp, carry a lot of bacteria, and some dogs and cats really don't appreciate this. And so that's okay if a pet is not into it and will not allow you to do that, that's okay. Just it's better to try than not. The second thing you want to realize is that you've got to use approved equipment such as finger brushes, such as canine toothbrushes which you can get at any pet store pretty much and an approved toothpaste. You don't want to use human toothpaste because it has mint in most of them and the animals, especially dogs, really seem to hate mint. But getting a kit, a toothpaste kit, toothbrushing kit is available at most pet stores and most veterinary clinics. And once you have that, the best thing to do is if you're pet will allow you to do it, you will take your finger brush or brush, apply the toothpaste to that and then start very gently. And so this is a model of a canine mouth. And basically what you're going to do is start gently in the very front of the teeth, the incisors, just like you would do yourself, kind of an up and down and circular motion, and then start moving your way into the mouth doing the sides of the canine teeth and then moving toward the molars and pre-molars. Some dogs if they're really good about it, will let you open their mouths a little bit and do the back sides, but not everybody really likes that. Just stay out of harm's way, and be very gentle, just like you would yourself. And if you can do that every, maybe twice a week is great, once a month is even better than nothing. Dogs that I see that get their teeth brushed even once a month look much, much better than if they get it not at all."