Popping in with an update....
In regards to the xray Pam- my vet does it as protocol with any teeth cleaning and in this case they strongly urged it because of how much tissue had grown over some of the teeth to check for bone abnormalities. They wanted to rule out any kind of boney cancers because Thora's Alkaline Phosphate levels were a bit elevated and that can cause it. But back to the surgery... Poor Thora ended up needing some pretty heavy duty work done. For starters, she had gingival overgrowth on 1/4 of her teeth, so she required quite a bit of removal there. She had three nodules (or whatever they are) removed and sent for biopsy. But what I was NOT expecting, is that my dog is a shark. She had THREE extra teeth! Lol. They were completely covered by gum tissue. All of those teeth did not fit in her little mouth and the result was teeth basically sitting on top of each other. That compromised the root system and as a result some of her teeth were loose and had little to no rooting. So she had a handful of teeth removed just from that. To add insult to injury, she also had a chipped canine, which I did see but didn't realize that the nerve endings were exposed. That can mean lots of pain for Thora and it's an easy entry point for bacteria to get in, so she had to lose the canine :( She was under anesthesia for over 5 hours. The vet that did the majority of the work passed the torch to one of the senior vets to remove the canine and finish up and at that point she called me to get me up to speed and also informed us that there's a handful more teeth that are loose that she recommends having removed in a second surgery. She said they try not to keep animals under anesthesia for more than 4 hours if they can help it and since Thora was already exceeding that they did not want to risk it and remove the other teeth. It was after 9pm by the time we brought her home and she was extremely groggy and confused. I felt awful :/ DH and I both slept on the floor that night in a pile of blankets with her. She was pretty restless and neither of us slept very well. The morning after the surgery she was certainly a pitiful sight, but I was able to get her to eat a little soft food and take her meds. DH checked on her throughout the day since we both had to work. By the evening she was starting to show some life again and this morning she's doing pretty good
She has a follow up in 2 weeks and at that point I'll get the low down on those other teeth and decide what to do. I'm not really in any hurry to put her through all that again unless it really needs to be done. I certainly don't want her to be in any kind of discomfort if the teeth are bad. I guess I have to give away all her deer antlers and get something a little softer for her to chew on. She's never been a big fan of nylabones.
I feel doubly bad because the day before the surgery I was talking online to an old friend who has a younger boxer who recently had ACL surgery. When I explained what Thora had he realized that his dog also has it... *eek!*
