Dental care in personal protection dogs is not just meant to care for your dog’s teeth. It goes a long way in preventing other health complications in your pet. Periodontal disease is quite common in dogs.
According to research, it affects about 80 percent of these pets. It is important to consider a pet’s oral health when checking out personal protection dogs for sale. Poor handling of this condition can easily lead to the development of chronic diseases.
How do Dental Diseases cause other Health Conditions?
Periodontal disease is caused by bacteria. These get lodged in the teeth and compete for resources with other useful bacteria. Note that the same harmful bacteria will get transported easily down to the gut or even into the bloodstream. The latter is very common in dogs with bleeding gums. In case the bacteria move into the body, inflammation will result.
As most people know, inflammation is the root of most serious diseases. That is the reason why you need to check a dog’s teeth before paying for personal protection dogs for sale. You could easily end up with a seriously ill pet if you shop carelessly.
Some pet owners brush their dogs’ teeth regularly as a way of getting rid of plaque. This is not always a good idea. Often, brushing your dog’s teeth will help to drive down the bacteria into the gut. In some cases, it even leads to injuring the dog’s gums, and this will get the bacteria into the bloodstream. Research has also shown that the bacterial colonies build up very fast after brushing, so the results are not even worth the risks taken.
Useful Bacteria
The microbiome in the mouth is not meant to be wiped out. It contains lots of useful and healthy bacteria that serve to keep your pet healthy. In reality, the relationship between the healthy bacteria and your dog is symbiotic. Both parties gain from it. But if you try to get rid of the unhealthy bacteria, you will also lose the useful ones in the process. That is another reason why you should not take steps to remove any bacteria from your protection dog’s mouth.
Unhealthy ways of treating your dog’s mouth include the use of antibiotics. These drugs will kill the bacteria indiscriminately, resulting in the loss of those that are healthy. Many other drugs and chemicals have the same effect on bacteria in the mouth.
Another way of harming healthy bacteria is by focusing on a diet that is excessively rich in starch or sugars. These elements simply aid in increasing the population of unhealthy bacteria. The competition between unhealthy and healthy bacteria will further become unbalanced. Similarly, most processed pet foods will fuel the growth of bacteria in the mouth. Such foods are usually completely free of bacteria, which is bad for the protection of dogs.
Before thinking of getting rid of unhealthy bacteria in the dog’s mouth, you should focus on protecting the useful ones.
Probiotics and Oral Health
If you think your protection dog’s useful bacteria have been compromised, you don’t need to resort to unhealthy practices. This is a new way of solving the problem. It involves the use of probiotics. Probiotics are currently being researched as a revolutionary way of treating bad breath, periodontal disease, and other dental conditions. The benefits of these friendly microorganisms have been proven to go far beyond the gut.
Basically, probiotics are meant to replace the lost useful bacteria in the mouth. This increases their population in the oral cavity, and that helps to overpower the unhealthy bacteria. The competition between friendly and unfriendly bacteria will be skewed against the unhealthy ones, thus improving the dental health of your pet. Research has shown that using probiotics reduces moderate to severe gingivitis. It also lowers the formation of dental plaque by about 20 percent. The bacteria can even help in the prevention of oral cancer in your pet.
Bad breath is rooted in sulfur compounds that are produced by bacteria in the mouth. This can be countered by healthy bacteria as they do not aid in the formation of such compounds. In fact, probiotics help in the formation of anti-bacterial by-products. These counter the harmful bacteria in the mouth.
Another advantage of probiotics is that they change the pH of the mouth and also alter the amount of oxygen. This helps to boost the dog’s immune system.
As a long-term result, probiotics will help to prevent inflammation in your protection dog, and this will prevent diseases. They have also been shown to help in bone formation. This will help to prevent damaged teeth from further deterioration.
All you need for the protection of your teeth are probiotics. That is why you should never feed processed foods to your dog. Avoid sugary and starchy foods as they don’t introduce useful bacteria to your dog’s system. On the contrary, they introduce food for unhealthy bacteria.
How to deliver Probiotics to your Dog
Many natural foods contain probiotics. Simply feeding these foods to your dog will help to boost their oral health. Alternatively, you can use probiotic supplements in the dog’s regular food to deliver the microorganisms. The supplements and the probiotic foods can even be used together. Supplements are usually marketed as containing certain strains of bacteria. You should make sure you use a variety of strains of bacteria on a daily basis to feed your protection dog. There should also be at least 10 million colony-forming units in the supplements.
It is important to also feed prebiotics to your dog. These are insoluble fibers that serve as food for probiotics. Without them, your efforts to introduce probiotics will be futile as they will eventually die.
Unfortunately, personal protection dogs are not very good at chewing food, and the bacteria are unlikely to be retained in the mouth. You can, therefore, choose to spray the bacteria directly into the mouth of the dog. Simply add an amount of probiotic powder to a spray bottle with a small amount of water. Make sure you use pure water since chlorine will kill the microorganisms.
In fact, probiotics will not survive for long even in pure water. You should make sure you make a new solution and immediately use it. If anything remains, you can use it in the dog’s food.
