My Pet World: Will tooth extraction help a dog with poor teeth?

Q: Please help! We love your column and need advice. Our 10-year-old dachshund has always had terrible teeth and no matter what we did (brushing, scaling at the vets, special oral sprays) nothing seemed to fix the situation and now it seems that she is in a lot of distress and is pawing at her mouth and drooling. Our vet says she needs to have every tooth extracted and this horrifies us. We wanted to know if you could advise us on any alternate solutions? -- Grace Walton. Macon, GA

A: I appreciate your kind words about me, but I am not worthy of your adulation in this matter as I am not a vet. I never went to college and I am lucky that I qualify for a library card.

However, I have had a lot of dogs with chronic dental problems pass through my hands in the last half-century and a few of them needed to have total extractions of every tooth in their mouths. I was always amazed at how happy the dogs were after the surgery. I would have thought they would have been in extreme distress after such a procedure, but it seems the pain of the compromised teeth in their mouth was greater than the injury to their gums due to the surgery. In just a few days, the dogs were happier and healthier than they were before the extraction.

Obviously a dog that does not have any more teeth cannot eat dry kibble, but they do just fine on canned food and they do not even realize their teeth are gone. The only issue in some pet keeper's minds is that a dog with no teeth will very often allow its tongue to hang out of its mouth. Some people think this looks cute and some do not but it is still an improvement over the drooling and smell that accompanies a dog with a mouthful of rotting teeth.

So if your vet prescribed this procedure for your dog then it is in the best interest of you and your dog. Plus, the dog will have a better quality of life as a result.

Q: I have a red betta fish named George that has been living in a little 2 gallon tank on my desk at work for the last month. I have some live plants in the tank and he has built a bubble nest around the stems that poke up out of the water. He really seems to be fixated on this nest and is always adding more bubbles to it. I was wondering if I should get him a female betta as a mate so he can make use of the nest. I know the males fight but I would imagine they do not fight with the females. -- Robert Miller, Baltimore, MD

A: You would think that getting your fish a mate would be a good thing to do but it would actually make the situation quite complicated.

First of all, the males do fight with the females. A male betta wants nothing to do with a female unless she is full of eggs and ready to breed. In that case, he would entice the female to the bubble nest and embrace her in order to stimulate her to lay the eggs that he fertilizes as she produces them. He would then grab each egg in his mouth and place them in the bubble nest with great care and deliberation. When the eggs are all laid and placed in the nest his romantic thoughts are over. The male fish would chase the female one away and kill her unless you take her out of the tank and put her in one of her own.

So now you have two tanks on your desk with a fish in each one. Then after the eggs hatch you have a lot more drama on your hands as the babies are very small and need a specially prepared food -- not the betta pellets you are feeding the father.

In a few days the babies are old enough to swim on their own and then the happy little family is finished as now the dad wants nothing to do with them and does his best to drive them out of his territory and there are only so many places for a fish to hide in a 2 gallon aquarium.

My advice is that if it ain't broke then don't fix it. George will be quite happy tending to his bubble nest and most likely has no idea he is missing out on anything at all in life.

Q: My cat must be part monkey because he uses his paws like hands and will pick up his food in one paw and eat it off his paw. He is 2 years old and we always thought his behavior was cute but he seems to have developed a taste for running water and he learned to pull the lever on our kitchen sink faucet to turn the water on and drinks as it is running. However he does not turn the water off and during the day if he does it then it is running for hours. We got him one of those drinking fountains for cats that always have water circulating and put it on our counter next to the sink but he prefers the sink water and still turns on the faucet. Can you advise us if there is any way to teach him not to do it? -- Cindy Ortiz, Orlando, FL

A: This is one of those situations where the pet wins by default. You cannot do anything in the way of training the cat not to do this unless you were around it all day monitoring the situation.

I never had a cat do this but I did have a dog that learned to turn the hose spigots on outside by actually turning the handle with her mouth so that she could play in the water. Of course she did not turn off the water so we ended up with a flood in the backyard all the time. In the end I had to have a plumber come over and change all the hose spigots to the type that you open up with a key.

So you may have to pay a visit to a plumbing supply store and get a new faucet that no longer has a handle like the one you currently have that way the cat can't pull or push to turn the water on. Once your monkey cat figures out it is game over, he will resign himself to drinking out of the fountain that you provided.

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(Marc Morrone has kept almost every kind of animal as a pet for the last half-century and he is happy to share his knowledge with others. Although he cannot answer every question, he will publish many of those that have a general interest. You can contact him at petxperts2@aol.com; please include your name, city and state.)