Good teeth and sweet breath are two of the Holy Grails of dog husbandry. Dogs have them as puppies, but, astonishingly, according to the American Veterinary Medicine Association in 2012, 70% of dogs in the USA have periodontal disease (PD: inflammation and/or infection of the structures supporting the teeth) by the age of 24 months old. Most dogs in the USA are fed dry brown kibble. 

Causes and Consequences of Periodontal Disease

PD happens in humans when you don’t floss and brush your teeth properly. If you eat so much sugary junk food, your brushing can’t keep up; then you’re in trouble. Or PD can happen when you’ve had antibiotics to disrupt the mouth microbiome, or are otherwise in poor in health. How? Let’s look at our dogs to show us.

Dogs can’t brush their teeth, but if they have a healthy, varied raw food diet involving daily chewing, this has the same effect. How do we know? Because hundreds of other raw feeding vets and I put thousands of dogs on raw food, including bones and chewy materials like heart, dried hides and defrosted pigs feet and see the resounding difference it makes to oral health. 

Other chewing materials include: chicken carcasses, duck necks and lamb ribs. Yes, we can brush their teeth for them, as our vets suggest, but few normal people can regularly clean thoroughly both inside, outside and the biting surface of every single tooth every day. Chewing bones and animal hoof and hide will do this very well.

Kibble and Bad Breath

Bad food, in the dog world, for me, is kibble. Kibble does not clean teeth. Let me say that again: Kibble does not clean teeth. 

If it did, why would one of the major kibble manufacturers invent a ‘tooth diet’ kibble to supposedly clean teeth? Just because kibble is crunchy doesn’t mean it impacts on tartar and plaque. Most vets expect to do at least 1-3 dental procedures on every dog during the dog’s lifetime. And they are mostly fed dry kibble. 

Kibble is also very high in carbohydrates. These are usually in the form of wheat, maize, sweet potato or oats etc. High carb food particles washing around the mouth all day with no brushing/cleaning/drooling over bones means you encourage strange new, non-doggy bacteria to take up residence in the mouth that are foreign to the dog. These bacteria massively predispose to the atrocious mouths we see on kibble fed dogs. And the classic ‘dog breath’. Poor owner, yes, but I feel sorry for the dog. Imagine. 

Bacterial overgrowth in the mouth will also happen after antibiotics. Just as they can predispose to thrush in us because the native microbiome is disrupted, so it can happen in the mouth. Indeed, thrush or yeast overgrowth is sometimes even seen in the mouth, too. 

Poor general health and disrupted immunity can also predispose to unhappy mouth microbiome, leading to plaque, tartar, gum disease and periodontal disease. 

The Answer: Chew

The answer, of course, is fresh, varied raw food with bones, chews (only healthy ones), chicken wings, carcasses, duck and turkey necks. The list of (healthy) chewy things for dogs is almost endless. That’s the joy of visiting the shop to see what treats healthy we can buy for the dog. 

Chewy dog treats and bones that dogs love and do their teeth a power of good. What’s not to like about that?