Poor Mimi!

Mimi had twelve teeth removed yesterday afternoon. Yep, that's right, twelve teeth. Don't worry, she has plenty left.

Here's a picture of the teeth that I took at the vet clinic when I picked Mimi. I took only the picture, leaving the teeth behind. Ew.

Most of those were incisors. They are tiny teeth for the most part--except in the fox terrier, the incisors have unusually large roots. She lost one premolar, those small teeth directly behind the canines, and the two large molars in the back of her upper jaw. I brush her teeth every couple of days but those teeth are hard to reach because of the shape of the fox terrier jaw, and I did worry that I wasn't getting them clean. According to the vet tech, they were darned hard to remove too. 

The problems with her teeth came on quite suddenly. She had a dental done just a year ago with only a single incisor extracted. For some reason, all of her remaining incisors (but one) just went south a few weeks ago. She also had a condition in which her gums were growing too exuberantly around some of affected teeth. This condition is more commonly seen in boxers, and in those dogs, the gums can grow so much that they cover the teeth completely. And she had an epulis, a small hyperplastic nodule on the roof of her mouth behind her upper incisors, which from my reading is thought to be from the peridontal ligament and is nearly always benign. 

I was worried that the vet who did the dental last year missed some obvious diseased teeth, but the vet who did the procedure this time seemed to think that Mimi just had a bit of bad luck. I was careful in how I posed my question to the second vet since I didn't want the issue to become a pissing contest between two different clinics. And Mimi's dramatic tooth removal shouldn't be used as an argument against brushing your dog's teeth. I've already started getting Archie used to the dog toothpaste even though his teeth are still beautiful puppy white.

Mimi is on the mend, eating well (two weeks of nothing but soft food--yummy!), and getting some good pain meds (tramadol and carprofen). She's been better though, and is not her bouncy self. Not a surprise with a sore mouth full of sutures. Poor old girl.