Furry friends » Blog Archive » Dogs and Bad Breath

Dogs and Bad Breath

Having a dog with bad breath is no laughing matter – especially if your dog is one for panting lovingly in your face when you go anywhere near it! There are things you can do however that can improve the situation and as they are more about changing habits of various kinds, they don’t take a lot of additional maintenance.

The main cause of smelly dog breath is because to poor dental hygiene. Fragments of food from your dog’s meal get lodged in his teeth and decay creating the smell. Soft dog meat such as canned foods are the biggest culprits for this and so changing your dog’s diet to dry dog meal instead of canned is an easy step towards improving his breath. Many of these dry dog foods are enriched with supplementary vitamins so it’s also good for his overall well being. When using dry dog food however make sure that you always leave a good supply of fresh water for him to drink as dry food tends to make a dog thirstier than tinned dog food.

Things that your dog can chew on will also work on any remaining plaque on his teeth. Dogs usually love to gnaw on rawhide type snacks and so giving him one of these will not only keep him busy for a while, it’ll also help him improve his dental hygiene! If you usually give him dog biscuits as a treat instead of raw hide ones, then try to ensure that you give him a black one every day (just one though, too many could cause other problems) as these contain charcoal which helps with the digestive system and therefore diminishes any bad odours that are around that area.

Of course what you should also do is to incorporate a regular tooth brushing session into your dog’s grooming schedule. This isn’t easy to start, especially with a dog who is a little older and hasn’t experienced this before, but if you start very slowly to first introduce the toothbrush to your dog, and then get it close to his mouth – do this for a few times over the course of a couple of weeks, and then try to insert it into his mouth. When he’s comfortable with this, try putting some water on it and see if he’s going to accept you rubbing the water on his teeth. Once he is, try a tiny bit of dog toothpaste – NOT your toothpaste, special dog toothpaste – and see how he reacts to it. You could even try introducing the toothpaste on your finger first, and then combine toothbrush and toothpaste together. If you can’t seem to get him to accept it, talk to your veterinary at your dog’s next schedule check-up and see if he can suggest something that will work.

Once you fix your dog’s mouth hygiene, you’ll find that while his breath may not be as “minty fresh” as you’d like, it’s still a vast improvement on how it used to be.

This entry was written by Hannah Panayiotes, she's also a author on Metro Male and Harry-nomics. Hannah is a noted specialist on the topic of botox injection.