Introduction
Keeping your dog's mouth healthy can be a valuable tool in maintaining the overall wellbeing of your dog. Hear are some helpful tips to sustaining a healthy mouth in dogs.
Maintaining a Healthy Mouth
Products For Oral Health
To keep your dog’s mouth healthy, it is important to give dogs plenty of healthy chewies that help to break up plaque and keep teeth strong. For a healthy mouth, dogs should also eat dry, crunchy, and nutritionally balanced meals.
Now that dogs are living longer than ever before, veterinarians and pet owners have realized the importance of keeping the mouths of dogs healthy and free of bacteria and infections. A number of products for healthy canine mouths have emerged on the pet market in recent years. These products are designed to help keep teeth strong, break up plaque on teeth, clean teeth, and reduce the amount of bacteria build-up in the mouth.
Things to Avoid
Do not give your dog bones or joints in order to keep your dog’s teeth clean. While chewing on bones is a good way to clean teeth, it is also a good way to obtain mouth and gastrointestinal injuries from bone splinters. Bits of bone can also become lodged in a dog’s trachea and gastrointestinal tract.
While soft dog foods are always a nice break from everyday crunchy foods, soft foods should only be given as an occasional treat. A dog’s diet should be composed mainly of hard and crunchy foods that help to keep teeth clean and strong. A nutritionally balanced diet will also help to reduce tooth decay and mouth infections. Dogs that are fed a diet composed mainly of soft foods can develop severe tooth decay and mouth infections as early as four years of age.