Thread: Vet wants to pull teeth?

At our last vet appointment for Mudkipz' shots, when we were arranging for his neuter, the vet mentioned pulling his puppy teeth if he hadn't lost them all by that time.

Is this normal or is my vet trying to make money off of me? My friends, when they heard about it, seemed to think the latter. I've never heard of it being done, but then I've never been the primary care-taker of a dog, either.

He'll be around 6 months when he gets neutered. He's already lost several teeth but I'm not sure how many.

Originally Posted by Inga

I have never had teeth pulled on a large breed dog. I have heard of it in Yorkies and other small breed dogs. Don't know what kind of dog you have.

He's a rat terrier, about 10-12lbs, approximately. He was 8.1 at the last vet appointment in November and he's growing like a weed.

Normal dogs have lost all puppy teeth BEFORE 6 months of age. This is one reason why the AKC will not allow puppies to be exhibited until they are 6 mos.

If he has puppy teeth remaining at 6 months of age and you are putting him under for a neuter, I would absolutely have any of them that are still there removed.

Originally Posted by Inga

I guess all my playing with a tug -a-rope with my puppies paid off. All the puppy teeth come flying out when I played like that. Oliver actually lost like 4 teeth by knawing on my sweater when he was a pup. It was like everytime he would come by me, he would sort of grab my arm (sweater) and by the time I got his mouth off and told him "no, no" there would be another puppy tooth hanging there. lol

Does your puppy chew on things? A big cotten rope maybe?

Oh, yes. Constantly. He always has something safe to chew on, because if he doesn't, he finds something!

Like I said, we've found several teeth, and I'm sure there are more. We've found the spaces in his mouth where the adult teeth haven't grown in.

I was a little worried about this, but since it sounds like it's not an uncommon procedure, we'll just wait and see if it is even necessary.

I'd suggest waiting till he's 6 months or right before the procedure to check if he still has any baby teeth left. Cadence was neutered at 5.5 months and the vet wanted to pull his last remaining canine and was going to charge me an extra $40-50 for it! (Ripoff, I tell you) I told her I'd monitor the tooth and if it didn't fall out on its own, I'd go in and see her... but it fell out on its own the next week anyways so it was a non-issue. You should check with your vet first on how much they charge for tooth extraction... sometimes they'll suggest you do ABC XYZ just to charge you more for it. Most pups still have one or two baby teeth left at 5+ months, so wait till your pup is at least 6 months before you bring him in if you're worried about them having to extract any of his teeth.