Grey's teeth issue clarified

Here's the letter from Grey's veterinary dentist. He had to have both milk and adult teeth out and have a plate fitted. The procedure was costly and unpleasant for Grey. Hopefully through selective breeding programmes this would be erradicated for future pups.

17/12/08

Ref your dog ‘Grey’ – Slovakian Pointer born April 2008.

Dear Miss XXX,

I am writing with a report on the dental problems and associated treatments we are carrying out upon ‘Grey’.

I fist saw him on 22/8/08 as a referral from you usual veterinary surgeon, who had noticed an abnormality in Grey’s teeth. I found that his lower temporary canines were erupted ‘inwards’ and as a result the tips were contacting the roof of the mouth. Also, the front part of the upper jaw was tilted downwards, resulting in the upper incisors being tipped slightly backwards, into the mouth, rather than being vertical. The tips of the upper carnassial teeth (large premolars) were catching on the gum of the lower jaw when the mouth closed, causing some gum recession. One final point was that some of the temporary teeth had small areas of missing enamel, the result of either an hereditary problem or an illness as a small puppy.

At the time I extracted the lower temporary canines to prevent damage to the roof of the mouth, and in the hope that the permanent canines would erupt into a more normal position. The enamel defects, being in temporary teeth needed no treatment, and we opted to monitor progress of the gum recession and upper incisor positioning as the permanent teeth erupted.

I saw Grey again on 19/11/08, at which time his lower permanent canines had erupted in the same plane as the temporaries, and were making deep indentations in the roof of the mouth. Additionally one of the upper incisors had erupted out of alignment with the rest of the incisors, necessitating extraction. Several incisors and premolars were either very slow to erupt, or had not erupted at all. At the time this was not causing a problem, although it might in the future.

We fitted a type of brace in the mouth, under an anaesthetic, to cause outward pressure on the lower canines each time Grey shut his mouth. At present this brace is still in the mouth, and the lower canine teeth are slowly moving into a more normal position, and we hope that when the brace is removed, Grey will have a functional, pain free bite, whilst at the same time retaining all four canines.

I do feel that the multiplicity of dental abnormalities must have a mainly genetic component, since there are so many abnormalities in one mouth. One could speculate that a breed with small numbers will have a small gene pool, and abnormalities more likely than in a breed with larger numbers.

Yours sincerely