Question:
Hi I own a Blue Healer who I brought in to have his teeth checked out. I was feeding him a mixture of both wet and dry because his teeth are badly designed for crunching up food. I read that there are generally 3 type of canine teeth and I would bet that healers have the ones that scissor their food. Anyway I ran out of canned and fed him just dry food and after eating most of it I noticed his entire mouth was red from bleeding. I previously had him seen for his breath a year ago at which time one of the back molars were extracted. The vet called me during the the last procedure to let me know that 5 of his teeth 2 front bottom and most of what he had on the right top back were pulled. I got him back and was instructed to as soon as possible have him on strictly dry food as well as 5-6 days of antibiotic, he got an antibiotic injection after the surgery that day. I immediatly noticed that his breath was unnoticeable, and he has been eating but his behavior seems to suggest he is uncomfortable and I know I pay to much attention and it cost me dearly when I do. What do I need to be watching out for and at what point should I take him in and I also was advised to feed him this prescription food which to my knowledge is nothing special except it is made into huge pieces as opposed to what I had been giving him. It is about the size of med milkbones and I can only hope he doesn't attempt to swallow it without chewing it. He eats it but I have been adding a bit of his regular dry and his gums have been bleeding a bit.

Answer:
I would recommend an all natural healthy diet, ones the vet prescribe are often made with lower quality ingredients, around a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 in my opinion.
Wet food won't hurt his teeth, in fact there's never really been a correlation between hard and soft diets affecting the teeth differently (an exception would be a diet that's semi moist and full of corn syrup like Gaine's Burgers)
If you feed him a diet of canned food his teeth may in fact improve, as he won't have that hard scratchy food lodging under his gums. The logic that a dog crunching on hard food will clean his teeth is silly to me, that's like saying if we eat crunchy food our teeth will be clean....you know what happens when you eat cookies, totally lodge in your gums! lol
Anyways, what I would say is that using a soft rubber finger toothbrush after meals of canned food will save the dogs gums and teeth from painful hard dog food. The vet shouldn't recommend hard food for already irritated gums, I'm surprised that they did actually.
Eaglepack holistic and Wellness make excellent canned foods that are on par with the pricing of veterinary diets, yet they use no byproducts, preservatives and only human grade ingredients.
You can also add water to their dry formulas to soften them up and that will be more economical if feeding canned exclusively is expensive.
Sorry if I sound like I"m advertising, hehe, but they're great diets : )
Oh, and I give my old girl Wellness Senior dry, moistened with water and sprinkle one Udo's Enzyme on each meal, and her health has dramatically improved, as well as her teeth.
Hope that helps out a bit,
Pepper

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