Brushing Dog Teeth
In the dog world, one of the most common health issues is the dental health of dogs. The fact is that many of the dogs out there will eventually have to get their teeth cleaned by the vet at some point and this is an expensive procedure that requires a general anesthetic at the vet clinic. Many dogs out there have bad breath and this is partly due to bad teeth which could have been avoided by owners brushing dog teeth on a regular basis.
I was guilty of this myself with my first two Lhasa Apso dogs Pepper and Max as I never really got into brushing dog teeth during those years. The end result was that both of them had to get their teeth clean at the vet at least 2-3 times during their lives if I recall correctly. Anytime we can avoid a general anesthetic, the better for our pets.
Brushing Dog Teeth Daily
Now with my current Lhasa Apso dogs Chester and Roxie, I made sure that brushing dog teeth was a daily activity so I trained both them and myself on this procedure very early one when they were still puppies. Now they have great looking teeth without any bad breath and we have not had to get our vet to clean their teeth at all.
Unfortunately, many dog owners (and cat owners) still do not brush dog teeth and as a result, many dogs will still have to go to the vet to get their teeth cleaned under general anesthetic. The fact is that training to brush dog teeth is not that hard. I created a special video for my dog readers last year and for anybody who is also a dog owner here and missed it, you can catch it at my dog teeth cleaning video and article.
Such a task with your dog is merely another example of what I call comfort zone expansion in personal development – see this early episode of Motivational WebTV to get a better understanding of this concept. In such a case, it will be a gradual comfort zone expansion for both the owner and the dog which is certainly possible. The benefits I derived from this example is no bad breath on my dogs and no unnecessary plus costly dog teeth cleaning at the vet.
photo credit: joysaphine
