Extraction Due to Blunt Force Trauma

Sunday night, June 7, I received a call from an adopter in New York about an altercation between his two greyhounds. One of them managed to smash the side of his jaw into some immovable object and the owner found that one of the dog’s canine teeth was pointing in an unnatural direction. I explained that the tooth was probably loose and could come out at any time and that extreme care should be given because if it fell out, a lot of blood would follow from the deep hole it would leave. This is certainly something that is almost impossible to deal with at home. The owner made arrangements to bring his dog in Monday for surgery on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a picture prior to the extraction.

The extraction was not difficult, but it was somewhat unusual because when the tooth came out, there was jaw bone around the surface of the root. The photo shows that this particular dog did not have a significant amount of root exposure, so the impact had to have been significant and he is lucky he didn’t break his jaw. We removed three other teeth during the procedure. These three teeth were significant in the fact that although they had plaque build-up, they did not look so bad from the front but were horrendous from the back.

We show you these pictures because we want all greyhound owners to pay attention to their dog’s mouth and have some overall sense of their condition just in case your vet doesn’t pay complete attention to your dogs oral hygiene issues, which is often the case.