Why is brushing your dog’s teeth so important?

While it’s not the easiest task to manage, brushing our dogs’ teeth can be integral to their health. So persevering and giving their gnashers a frequent clean is well worth it.

Just as with humans, brushing your dog’s teeth can prevent smelly breath, and although this might sound trivial, bad breath can actually signal deeper problems in your dog’s mouth such as a build up of bad bacteria. This can lead to abscesses, rotting and the loosening of your dog’s teeth as well as bone and gum deterioration.

What’s more if bacteria from an abscess reaches the bloodstream, which it can, it can cause serious harm to your dog’s kidneys, liver and heart.

When brushing your dogs teeth you should take care to use special dog toothpaste, which foams up less and is less likely to be swallowed by your dog. You can even get a specially made dog toothbrush which is designed to be more forgiving on your dog’s teeth.

Ideally it would be best to brush your dogs teeth every day, but often this isn’t possible or you might forget, so just making it part of your weekly routine by brushing them on a certain day each week  would pay dividends for your dogs health in the future.

For more practical tips on dog training, behaviour therapy and other pet related issues, please visit our articles (link to: https://www.witsend4pets.co.uk/category/articles/) page which is full of free advice.