Teeth cleaning

[Fraggle78]

I was just wondering whether anyone uses those additive things you can put in drinking water to help keep a dog's teeth clean? Despite being fed lots of bones etc big dog's teeth seem to be be prone to plaque. He does let us brush them, but this process tends to mainly consist of him doing his best to lick the doggy toothpaste off the brush as quickly as possible.

Any advice or opinions gratefully received!

I'm using the Beapher dental nuggets at the moment and I'm convinced that my dogs teeth look better , and he also has nice breath . Mine also licks the toothpaste faster than I can brush !

I've tried the water stuff and also plaque off in food and found neither to help. Please try with the brushing as much as possible. My dog had several expensive denials under GA due to plaque and ended up having all her teeth out.

We will definitely continue with the brushing - I was just wondering if there is anything else we could try as well. Chewy things don't really work because he has massive teeth so they last about 2 minutes. I thought stag bars might be the way forward, but he doesn't seem overly interested. Perhaps I should impregnate them with the chicken toothpaste he seems to enjoy so much...

My vet showed me that you can pick the worst of the plaque off with your thumbnail - I was amazed and didn't know why I hadn't thought of trying to pick it off myself. I kind of assumed it would be harder and more cement-like, iykwim. You have to kind of get your thumbnail at the top edge of the thick plaque and flick it down and outwards. If you get the worst of it off like that, then persist with the brushing you should be able to stop it building up again.

That said, the absolute best thing for teeth cleaning is a nice big raw bone for them to gnaw on. Feeding raw bones does wonders for dogs' teeth, so much so that my oldgirl's teeth were better at 13 and a half than most dogs half her age or less - she hardly had any plaque at all and didn't suffer from dog-breath either.