A clean puppy is a healthy puppy!
Grooming your puppy is important because it is a way to connect with your pet and helps you identify any future concerns with skin, eyes, ears and mouth issues. Your puppy can learn to enjoy some pampering if introduced correctly. Dental care is important and easier to teach at a younger age. Some breeds are prone to dental disease early in their lives, so getting them on a routine home dental care regiment will help prevent early dental disease and loss of teeth.
Puppy Dental and Grooming Care
- It is important to introduce home dental care (tooth brushing, pastes/gels or dental treats) - ask for a free dental kit.
- Dental kits come in different sizes. Some include small dental brushes or finger brushes for easy dental brushing. Some owners find it easier to use a moisten wash cloth to apply and rub the specially formulated pet dental tooth paste.
- You can start this as early as 6 weeks of age to get your puppy more familiar with the process.
- At 8 weeks, puppies typically have deciduous or “baby” teeth visible by 8 weeks of age and get replaced with adult teeth starting around 4 months of age.
- At 7-8 months of age all baby teeth are lost and adult teeth should be present.
- Sometimes puppies can retain deciduous teeth where an adult tooth and a baby tooth are both present.
- often your veterinarian would recommend removal of that deciduous tooth (often done under anesthesia during spay or neuter) to avoid dental issues such as misalignment, crowding and oral pain.
- Dental health is extremely important in overall health, especially in breeds that are prone to dental disease such as all small breeds, greyhounds and brachycephalic dogs
- “Puppy breath” is a characteristic of all puppies and will only last until maturity.
- Regular bathing may be required in some breeds verses others.
- A mild hypoallergenic shampoo especially formulated for dogs is recommended.
- Young puppies may require some basic - wash cloth wiping after meals, an eager hungry puppy can make a mess.
- They will need their nails trimmed once monthly. As they get older the nail trims can vary between 6-8 weeks.
- Some puppies will need their ears cleaned. Be sure not to over clean ears as they more start to produce excessive wax to make up for excessive drying of the ear canal.
- Long hair dogs should be brushed daily to avoid excessive matting. Areas to focus is the back of ears, neck, axilla (armpits) belly, hind legs and tail/tail base. Start brushing them when they're young so they can get use to handling and grooming.
- As your puppy gets older matting may occur, we offer professional grooming services to shave mats or help you maintain a mat free coat.