Bad Teeth Lead to Poor Health
Your greyhounds teeth is the #1 impactible health issue in which you can make a significant difference and it actually starts before you bring a greyhound into your home. This is done by carefully selecting a greyhound that either has a good mouth to begin with or to adopt from a program that has done a really good job in addressing each of their greyhounds’ dental issues. Cleaning exclusively doesn't always solve the problem but many greyhound programs and veterinarians do not recognize the benefit of extractions or don’t do it because the greyhound program cannot afford the cost of the work. If you only clean a greyhound’s teeth and leave the root exposed teeth behind, it will not take long for tarter and plaque to rebuild, bacteria to enter the blood stream and periodontal disease to run rampant. Your best defense is in recognizing it.
This article will show you pictures of a greyhound with a good mouth and how it should look. Then, in great detail, we will show you Piper. Piper is a delightful 5½-year-old female whose teeth were truly atrocious. We photographed her teeth within 24 hours of arriving at the kennel from the track. We put her on prophylactic antibiotics right away. Approximately a week-and-a-half later, when it was her turn to be spayed, we photographed her teeth again under anesthesia protocol, then cleaned most of her teeth and photographed what they looked like with root exposure, extracted 27 teeth and then photographed her mouth again. The final photos will be entered once her mouth is healed.
Piper feels so much better now and it is evident in how she acts and runs. Removing the 27 has made her life better. Can she eat? Of course she can! But now she eats with no pain.
Piper is a good example of how neglected dental issues are in many racing greyhounds. I can recall many years ago in Florida, one breeder said, "Oh, most greyhounds have bad teeth anyway." Sadly, the greyhounds that end up with the worst teeth are those that are kept for breeding. Not taking good care of the mouth of the greyhound you are using to breed strong, healthy puppies is pretty stupid when you think about it.
Several years ago a veterinarian by the name of Dr. David Moses, who kept stud dogs for others, released a dog for adoption named "Fused Energy". I was there the day Fused Energy passed through our kennel on his way to another adopter. His mouth remains one of the worst I have ever seen. Luckily we were able to persuade the adopter to bring him back so we could remove almost all of his teeth for free. Some teeth were so loose they could be pulled out by hand.
If you get the Greyhound Review, you will see that Dr. David Moses is still involved in greyhound racing in Florida and will provide you with frozen semen for breeding. I suspect he probably still has greyhounds with horrible teeth.