Holly, the service dog my wife and I are training for Helping Paws lost a tooth this week. To be more precise, she had a tooth removed. A few weeks ago while she was laying on her back with her jowls flopped open, I noticed that one of her top incisor teeth was shorter than the others. When I took a closer look, it was obvious that it was broken. The little red dot in the center of it told me that it was probably broken down to the pulp cavity. My vet confirmed that. So there were two choices: remove the tooth before it dies and gets infected or do a root canal and then cap the tooth. It wasn’t too difficult of a decision since the tooth is such a small one and is hidden underneath her droopy upper lip. We had it removed.

The vet told us this was a “minor extraction”, but of course, Holly still needed to be put under anesthesia to have it removed. Man! That anesthesia sure mixes her up. When she came home she was staring at the walls, walking into things, tripping over herself and whining. She wasn’t whining because she was in pain, she was just really confused. When it was finally time to go to bed, I put her in her kennel and she laid there and softly whined. The only way I could get her to lay quietly was to sit next to her kennel. So, I sat on the floor and dozed next to her kennel until she was finally asleep. I woke up at 1:30 AM to the sound of her softly snoring. I also woke up with a stiff neck and sore butt!

The next morning Holly was her usual self. You couldn’t even tell she’d had a tooth out. We kept the tooth. It is amazing how big it is.

–Pete