Today is the full moon.
Give your monthly preventatives!
Note: If you have another way to remember to give your preventatives, that’s okay too! Do what works for you. I thought it might be fun for us to all give it together.
February is Pet Dental Health month!
I have seen lots of little dogs for dental cleaning and extractions lately. Little dogs tend to have more dental disease than my larger patients, although Shelties and any of the sighthounds (like Greyhounds and their smaller cousins), also tend to have more severe dental disease than other breeds. I have been seeing a lot of Doodles that have dental disease as well. Sometimes the dental disease can be so severe that the infection erodes/eats away/disappears the bone holding in the tooth. Calculus on the tooth provides a shelf for bacteria to live between the calculus and the gums – you can sometimes see the gums recessing away from the infection, what you don’t see is that the bone is recessing as well.
Compare the two photos below. For top teeth – this isn’t pretty – it is stinky and eventually the tooth falls out. For bottom teeth on little dogs that don’t have much jaw bone to start with… it can be a disaster that leads to a broken jaw! If you feel your own mandible, you can feel your jawbone that holds your lower teeth in – it is not very wide. Now imagine you are a four pound Yorkie. It doesn’t take a lot of infection to weaken the bone to where it can break – either purely as a result of the infection – or when I try to remove the tooth where a lot of bone loss has already occurred.
The image below is from the following link. The entire article can be read HERE.
It demonstrates diseased teeth of a small dog where a lot of bone loss has already occurred. Note the bone loss around and at the bottom of the root of the largest tooth. This area is “ready” to fracture.
These are the same teeth as 407, 408, 409 shown in the next photo below of normal teeth on a larger dog.
Here are normal radiographs (albeit from a much larger dog). This is from:
https://vetdentedu.ca/2023/01/02/normal-canine-dental-radiographs/
We sell dental wipes and there are dental diets that help to physically remove tartar (if the pet is crunching their food and not swallowing whole pieces). There is an organization called the Veterinary Dental Oral Health Council that approves a variety of products to help with dental health. Here is a link to their accepted products: https://vohc.org/accepted-products/
Many little dogs just need to have their teeth cleaned on a regular basis – once or twice per year – so they will be more likely to keep their teeth.
I am writing this newsletter on the Monday of the big snowstorm. I made the decision on Friday to be closed if the University of Rhode Island canceled classes. A huge THANK YOU to my neighbors David and Kelly who have plowed my driveway for every major snowstorm since 1999!
I find myself troubled by what is going on in Minneapolis. My husband and I met each other again in Minneapolis at a conference. We knew each other before we met in Minneapolis because I was working my way through college washing dishes in a laboratory at Virginia Tech and he was there doing research as part of his post doctoral education. I had moved on to the University of Florida to start my graduate education. Mark and I re-met and started our long distance romance in Minneapolis! In February we will have been a couple for 32 years!
Minneapolis and immigration is important to me in another way as well. At the University of Florida my major professor was Dr Peter Nkedi-Kizza. Peter was a huge influence on my life and I remember him daily when I take time for prayer and contemplation each morning. I moved to Gainesville in 1991 after graduating from Virginia Tech. My original plan when I started at Virginia Tech was to graduate in four years and make enough money to have a horse. I was going to do this by getting a good engineering job. Unfortunately, I could not pass my differential equations class.
I had gone to an information session at Virginia Tech for those of us interested in medicine and veterinary medicine. One of those spaces where they say, “So glad you are here, look to your right, look to your left. One of you will be going to medical school. The two others need to find something else to do.”
I figured I was one of those people that needed to find something else to do…
So with some interest in international development and the environment, I majored in Agronomy, washed dishes in a lab in that department, and participated in a student exchange program in Kenya.
I was accepted into a lab at University of Florida on a graduate assistantship – meaning that my tuition was paid and I would receive a small stipend for teaching and doing research.
After doing this for about two semesters, I realized that research did not fit my fifteen minute attention span and what I REALLY wanted to do was veterinary medicine. Like REALLY, REALLY.
So I went to Peter, crying, and telling him I wanted to quit graduate school and pursue veterinary medicine.
He didn’t get mad. He just sat with me. Asked me to stop crying. Told me that I was his first graduate student and he wanted me to graduate and that we would do this together. HE BELIEVED IN ME!
Maybe at a time when I was unsure and I didn’t even believe in myself.
I hadn’t taken the classes that I needed to take to go to veterinary school as an undergraduate.
Peter supported me by allowing me to teach and to continue my research while I took all the classes I needed to apply to veterinary school.
I was a lot more disciplined, there was a lot more at stake, and I had learned how to study.
Through the stipend I took organic chemistry, physics, biochemistry and animal science.
I was studying Soil and Water Science. He didn’t have to support me though any of this.
I was accepted to Auburn University’s incoming 1993 veterinary school class.
I had not finished my master’s degree.
I returned to University of Florida between my first and second year of veterinary school and finished my master’s thesis on the flow of Atrazine, Diuron, and Carbaryl through soils.
About 10 years ago Peter invited me to join him in Nairobi. He was teaching at University of Kenya.
Both he and his daughter had Fulbright Scholarships to teach there.
I didn’t go. I was busy with work and trying to get away for 10 days seemed like too much.
A couple years ago I decided I wanted to see Dr Kizza and to thank him.
I discovered he died in 2023.
If there is someone you love, please thank them now and do the thing. I regret not making the effort to go to Kenya when he invited me.
Peter Nkedi-Kizza immigrated from Uganda (it’s the country along the east African coast just south of Kenya) escaping the dictator Idi Amin.
Today he could not get into this country to work as professor at University of Florida.
Without Peter I would not be a veterinarian.
I could not clean and extract your little dog’s teeth.
I could not build a business where I try to treat everyone with kindness and dignity.
I am very sad about what is happening in Minneapolis and to my country.
Dr Mo is seeing exotic pets!
(Send him kind thoughts and well wishes. He is out on medical leave and expected back February 18th.)
Happy full moon gazing!
Remember your monthly heartworm and/or flea and tick prevention!
– Dana