Dental work

[Livvyliv18]

My vets advised my dog needs a mouth assessment,scale and polish plus 2 teeth removed
The cost is £710
This seems so expensive.Has anyone had this done for their dog ?
TIA

A couple of years ago my dog had 1 tooth removed , scale and polish and that was about £600 including pre op bloods . Dog is 15 kg .

Skinny lurcher aged 9 had 10 teeth out and cost me £800..

Last year one of mine had a clean & polish & two teeth removed. Cost £280.

Some of it is going to come down to which teeth and how loose were they. Finger loose or did they required full surgical extraction with a gingival flap. Dogs dental treatment can easily take several hours so a vet and a nurse ( monitoring) tied up for all that time. Not mention that tooth extraction can be hard physical work.

Sounds pretty standard.

A lot depends on the size of the dog as that will significantly impact costs of things like anaesthetic and pain relief.

I'd love a dog but there's no way with these costs. That aside, how do they manage with so many teeth out?

They have 42 to start with, but even with no teeth dogs eat normally.

They manage absolutely fine - you may just have to swap their diet for a wet food and a softer kibble but otherwise they cope remarkably well - just as cats do in fact.

I recently had this too. I was sceptical st first but obviously went ahead. Afterwards, it was like I had a new dog, he had a new lease of life in him. He must have been in great pain. I paid £500

I live in a farming community and use a farm vet my dog had had 5 teeth removed and a scale and polish etc I was advised £150-160 when I went to pay £116! This was last year.

That was a good price, thought mine was cheap 😁
I’m wondering where some of these very expensive charging vets are based. Like yours mine is a rural vet, mainly farm work

@Darklane I also genuinely don’t understand how 1 vet can charge £116 and another £710. I know there’s renting/purchasing suitable properties business rates etc which clearly vary according to your location and wage are probably higher in certain areas again London/south east in particular but some costs must be the same wherever you live in the country.

I’m in North Yorkshire and they’ve quoted £710.Not sure if it’s worth getting some other quotes.It does seem pricey when others have quoted a much cheaper price

I guess prices vary simply because vet practices and offerings vary.

Mine can be pricey but they have a dedicated and new operating theatre and diagnostic facilities including a hydrotherapy unit. All of that has to be paid for so I tend to look at it from the view that I could go to a cheaper vets but mine can and does a lot of the work in house so I stick with them.

Costs vary for all sorts of reasons.

Ours is a cheap rural farm vet too but I'm not going to pretend their facilities are even remotely comparable to what was available at our pricier, suburban vet in our previous location.

The vets are excellent and we receive excellent treatment but anything too complicated means we get referred elsewhere as they just don't have the facilities to deal with it.

My friend was quoted £960 so not an unusual cost .

£509 for 5 teeth last month including 2 follow up visits.

Depends what's being done. Gold standard would be full mouth xrays, deep clean and removal of any problem teeth. Upto 3 extractions with all the above is generally around the 700 mark.
The above procedure can take upto 3 hours, that's a surgeon and a VN monitoring the GA. We certainly don't do them for fun.
Old school independant vets might just do a scale and polish and would be unlikely to do xrays etc (the xrays alone can take upto an hour). They might also not use a qualified nurse to monitor the anaesthetic. They may also not use modern techniques for teeth removal such as nerve blocks/suturing. There's so many variables which is why there is a disparity in prices.

My dog might not have had the "gold standard" treatment that you describe I'm pretty sure he didn't have any xrays. But I think it's fair to say that not only was I pleased at the cost I'd budgeted for a lot more but I also at the outcome. Im not usually a worrier when it comes to vets and treatment but my poodle has a very low pain threshold so I was concerned how he would manage having read some comments on here by others owners who've had dental work done on their dogs. He skipped in and skipped out 9 hours later. I was advised to feed him wet food for 3-4 days as they said it would be easier for him. He's never eaten wet food and despite me buying a top end of the range highly recommended buy the our local pet store food he wouldn't touch it with barge pole instead that evening happily munched his dried biscuits he was slightly tired that night the next day he was back to completely back to normal. He had gum disease/bad breath before having it done and that has good completely.
I've spent 35 years around horses and have grown increasingly cynical about vets. Vets only make a living and pay for their surgeries etc by treating animals so it becomes inevitable that owner of horses or small animals (who usually have insurance and can thus afford it) will be offered complicated and expensive diagnostics and treatments because they are available and their doting owners are being told this is the "gold standard". But in times gone by many dogs would like mine have been absolutely fine on a £116 dental treatment.
A friends daughter is a vet she no longer works with small animals because she has ethical concerns about the ever increasingly complicated long and expensive "treatments" being offered versus the medium to long term outcomes. But I guess thats another thread!