Dr. Angie Krause (00:00)
Welcome back to Tails of Truth, where we tell the truth about veterinary medicine. I'm Dr. Angie, and this is my co-host and veterinary nurse extraordinaire JoJo. And today we're talking about anesthetic-free dentistry.

JoJo (00:14)
I like this topic because it's so popular.

Dr. Angie Krause (00:17)
It's so popular and understandably so.

JoJo (00:18)
So,

Is it understandably so? I think it's being marketed in a way that makes it understandably so.

Dr. Angie Krause (00:22)
Yeah.

But don't you think it solves a need that people have? They wanna clean their dog's teeth, they don't wanna pay for the anesthetic event, and they don't wanna put their dogs under anesthesia or cats.

JoJo (00:38)
Yes, I understand. I understand why, I understand why people are doing it. I'm not sure I understand how effective it is and it's pricier than I thought it was. I know and I did a little bit of a deep dive.

Dr. Angie Krause (00:40)
So you're like, well.

it's not effective. That's what this whole podcast is. ⁓

JoJo (00:58)
Okay, a mid-level dive, not deep. Yeah, I wanted to know, because it's everywhere. I mean, there's all these pop-ups, right? At the groomer, at the pet store, at the, I don't know, at the park. Not at the park, but it feels like it's like one of those pop-up, at the farmer's market kind of thing. And I was surprised, because I looked at the one that was the biggest in our state. I'm not gonna name names.

Dr. Angie Krause (01:01)
Okay, look at you.

⁓ yes.

Pretty much.

Yeah.

JoJo (01:24)
that they have board certified dentists come in, which I did not know that. I thought this was maybe just like, you know, your mobile groomer who came through and had their people. I was surprised that they had board certified dentists. Did you know this?

Dr. Angie Krause (01:37)
I have no idea what you're talking about, but I want to know. Yeah. Wait, to do anesthetics, because board certified dentists would never do anesthetic-free dentistry.

JoJo (01:39)
You look confused, so now I'm like...

I know, and I'm gonna check myself when you start talking, so when everybody sees me looking, so that if I need to correct myself, because then I'm just gonna give you all the information and you can debunk everything. Okay, so I'm on this site and one, they say that did you know, did you know Dr. Angie, that 80 % of dogs will have some type of periodontal disease by the time they're age three? That sounds valid.

Dr. Angie Krause (01:49)
Okay.

Yeah, let's give this a Google. Okay. Okay, good. Okay.

Yeah.

JoJo (02:15)
But then there's the fear piece, and I'm not sure if it was this same

Dr. Angie Krause (02:15)
Valid. Yeah.

JoJo (02:18)
site or another one, of like, that could take two years off of their life. Valid?

Dr. Angie Krause (02:22)
I mean, I guess. It's more complicated than that.

JoJo (02:27)
I know, but that's the piece that like if you care about your pet, you might go, I don't want them to live two years less. So I'm going to get this anesthesia free dental. So then I watched how they do it. Cause I was just thinking of every dog I've ever had in my life and they do cats and they do, yeah, they mostly do dogs and cats. I'm like, how, how, how?

Dr. Angie Krause (02:37)
Right.

Okay.

JoJo (02:50)
It's a 45 minute procedure where they're scraping the teeth. And so the dog is basically laid in the lap of the technician who, you know, is doing this. And I'm thinking, how, how? And they don't let your pet parent go with them. Which I always thought you could sit with your animal during this, especially if it was at like the pet food store or something. $295 is what the fee is.

Dr. Angie Krause (02:52)
Yeah.

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Yeah.

JoJo (03:18)
Yeah. Yeah. And

Dr. Angie Krause (03:19)
dang, okay.

JoJo (03:21)
what do they do for anxious pets? Flower essence.

Dr. Angie Krause (03:25)
⁓ Okay.

JoJo (03:26)
And I was like, hmm. So I have an alternative, but I kind of felt like, what is this? What's happening? What are we selling?

Dr. Angie Krause (03:36)
Yes.

I mean, it's-

JoJo (03:37)
And if they find a

broken tooth or anything, then you still pay the, I believe you still pay the 295. They give you a piece of paper to take back to your veterinarian for an anesthetic procedure.

Dr. Angie Krause (03:43)
Uh-huh.

Right. I mean, I think here, I'm going to say the nice thing first. I'm going to say the nice thing about it. We're going to start off positively. I mean, it does reduce tartar. So it does. And it does make your dog's teeth look better. Right? It's great to get all that tartar off.

JoJo (04:02)
So pretty. the before and afters

are just so sparkly.

Dr. Angie Krause (04:08)
Yeah. And so there is some benefit there. So that's, that's the positive part. The negative part is they are not cleaning under the gum and they're not assessing the tooth structure under the gum, which is where a lot of disease is. And so it becomes kind of a cosmetic procedure. And so that's why I get why people do it. but it's not getting most of the disease and unfortunately.

JoJo (04:22)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angie Krause (04:33)
when I was practicing down in Denver and I was doing a ton of dentistry's cause I was the only practitioner that wanted to do them. And I was practicing in an integrative practice. So a lot of the client base was using these services. And what I would see is they'd be like, I've been getting these cleanings regularly. And then I would go in there and I would have to take out so many teeth.

JoJo (04:59)
Hmm.

Dr. Angie Krause (04:59)
And so, and I think people felt one guilty because they had allowed their animal to have all of this pain for years. And then they kind of felt, betrayed because they felt like, no, I've, I've, I've been keeping up on this. Like that can't be, I, you know, I call them, Hey, I need to take out all these teeth or Hey, there's so much disease here and we need to take out so many teeth that we're going to do this in two anesthetic events.

JoJo (05:13)
That's, yeah.

and with somebody who's working so hard to avoid an anesthetic event.

Dr. Angie Krause (05:28)
And the number of times I would see that.

Exactly. And so what I, over time, I trained all those clients had rather you, you see me once a year and we can talk about how often dogs need their teeth cleaned, but let's say I have a little dog with a lot of periodontal disease. I'd rather you see me every six months to a year. I'd rather put your dog in Twilight sedation, for 30 minutes, then have you do this.

And honestly, it's just so much more money they've spent now, because wow, that's expensive. Yeah.

JoJo (06:05)
Yeah, and it is recommended

every six months to 12 months, again, depending on your breed. mean, for the life of me, I cannot imagine a cat doing this. I know that they have a feline clientele, but I can't even wrap my head around it.

Dr. Angie Krause (06:14)
I

Yeah.

Not that many. the other thing we should talk about, like speaking of that is, is this fair to do to these dogs? Like a golden retriever, like maybe, I don't know, maybe they're okay with it. But for the most part, like how stressful is this for these patients? I watched them in the commercials and just like, they'll just burrito them up.

JoJo (06:40)
Yeah, that's what they do, they burrito the smaller dogs. The Goldens might really lay on their back in your lap. That might happen.

Dr. Angie Krause (06:47)
right but like ⁓ is this fair?

JoJo (06:49)
And scraping,

⁓ the scraping, like, cause they do it manually, it's with a manual tool. So if you've ever been into the dentist, maybe this is a me thing. The sensory experience of that is so stressful, of the scraping and that feeling. Ugh, it's the, ugh, it's the worst.

Dr. Angie Krause (06:52)
Yeah.

God, I love that so much. I love the sound of it.

I love getting

my teeth cleaned, but I also love... ⁓ no.

JoJo (07:14)
Do think there's a dog that's feeling that way? Like, yeah, that is such

a wonderful feeling. It is a wonderful feeling from the practitioner side to like scrape off those like sheets of stuff. But yeah. And I can see why people feel so intrigued and interested in like, I don't want to say that people are doing a bad thing. I don't think you're doing a bad thing. I think, I think that the betrayal piece was that was a great word.

Dr. Angie Krause (07:23)
Ugh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

JoJo (07:40)
It's misleading to think that this isn't the only thing that you need to do for your pet in terms of oral health.

Dr. Angie Krause (07:46)
Absolutely.

Yes, it's an expensive thing to do. It's a cosmetic thing to do and Yeah, I mean, it's just not that great. It just can't replace it's it's like you should think of it as a completely different service And it's not meant to replace it and it's not meant to avoid anesthesia You know, get why people do it. So I you know, if they're like, oh, you mean I can take care of my dog's teeth without

JoJo (08:00)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Angie Krause (08:11)
paying six or $700, maybe $1,000 and I don't have to put them under like this is such a win. So I get why people buy it.

JoJo (08:17)
⁓ Right, and I think that they

cite studies about like they studied all these, he was miniature schnauzers, and once they stopped doing daily brushing, their periodontal disease came back, right? So this was one way to maybe replace your brushing. I think that's kind of how it's being sold, which that feels valid. Like this is maybe a really good brushing.

Dr. Angie Krause (08:36)
⁓

I get it.

Yeah. Yeah.

JoJo (08:45)
a really good like

⁓ a surface cleaning.

Dr. Angie Krause (08:48)
Yeah, of like the tooth that you can see. Kind of.

JoJo (08:48)
A real... Yeah.

Which how much of the tooth lives under the gum?

Dr. Angie Krause (08:55)
Like the majority of it. Yeah.

JoJo (08:56)
Yeah, a lot of it, right?

Yeah, ⁓ a good percentage of it. I do wanna go back to what I did say. On this site, it says, our team consists of board certified veterinarians.

Dr. Angie Krause (09:00)
Yeah.

I mean, I'm a board certified veterinarian, but not like in any specialty. ⁓ man.

JoJo (09:10)
Yeah. Oh, so it's a veterinarian. It's just, yeah.

and

experience canine dental hygienist.

Dr. Angie Krause (09:20)
that's that's icky, icky, icky, icky marketing. So they didn't say veterinary dentist. No.

JoJo (09:23)
Yeah.

No.

So they do have veterinarians and they won't treat any dogs with heart murmurs. I mean, they can have, I think they can have a one, two, anything above that. So that tells me it must be stressful.

Dr. Angie Krause (09:35)
⁓

No, this is the reason. No, it's because when you clean and you like dislodge all that stuff, the idea is that maybe you are creating more bacteria in the blood. And so that could go to the heart and cause heart problems like an infection called endocarditis, which.

JoJo (09:39)
Or is it the positioning?

Okay.

Dr. Angie Krause (10:02)
I'm sorry, but like if that is, if that's the state of medicine we're in, it's just not up to date. Yeah. So that's not good. And the fact that we're saying it's only grade one and two, like also not up to date. That's not an up to date concept.

JoJo (10:13)
Okay, so, yeah.

Well, and how many people,

I'm imagining they're not examining your pet before this. I don't know, maybe I need to go see what it's about. I'm gonna start there because I am speaking from I've never done this. And I'm kind of just imagining it to be like a grooming appointment because of the way it's in pop-ups. It seems so casual.

Dr. Angie Krause (10:31)
Yeah.

Yes.

I think it is very casual. Like I've worked in pet food stores or places where like we've seen appointments in those locations and they host them. They're like clinics. It's kind of like a vaccine clinic. It's like, just stop by and get your dog's teeth cleaned.

JoJo (10:51)
And I think they do do some of those things too. I think they do do vaccine add-ons and such. I do think so. Okay, so here's, wait, let's go back to positive. What's a positive? I know I came in hot on this one. I kind of did. And so the note's really bad because I was like, I really don't want anybody to feel ashamed if they've done this.

Dr. Angie Krause (10:56)
they do?

Okay, sorry.

Okay. Okay. Okay. I mean.

Yeah.

JoJo (11:12)
So I think I'm feeling bad. I'm like backpedaling because I don't want anybody to feel bad that I'm judging you. I'm not judging you as a listener or as a pet parent. I'm judging the marketing. That's what I'm judging. I just want to be clear about that because I know I came in a little bit hot.

Dr. Angie Krause (11:12)
Totally.

Yes.

Well, there's a, I think the message is you've been had a little bit. Yeah, it's not a friend.

JoJo (11:30)
a little bit, unless you were going for clean teeth,

like ⁓ a shiny smile.

Dr. Angie Krause (11:35)
Right, and I wish they would say this is just cosmetic.

JoJo (11:39)
It's way, way, down.

There's a disclaimer somewhere. I don't know.

Dr. Angie Krause (11:43)
that says we're gonna miss

half of the, over half of the dental disease in your dog's mouth.

JoJo (11:47)
Um, didn't say that and I apologize still for my smoker hack. So I wish I was just a smoker. It would be so much more fun. Um, I don't know. And $295. That's just not affordable in my opinion. I don't know. I thought I did laugh when I was like, Oh, flower essence for the stress out dogs.

Dr. Angie Krause (11:49)
I'm gonna try not to make you laugh, I'm sorry.

haha

Wow, yeah.

For anxiety,

I mean, I don't know a lot about flower essence and so I'll let the people that do know about that, talk about that, but I think it's got to be the equivalent or less than the equivalent of being like, your dog's stressed out. I just gave him a couple doses of CBD and I love CBD. I'm a huge fan of it. I mean, we've done so many episodes. I use it all the time in practice, but it's not an appropriate anxiolytic for a stressful event like that.

JoJo (12:27)
Hmm.

Dr. Angie Krause (12:39)
That's an inappropriate use of it. You're not gonna get the results you want from that.

JoJo (12:45)
Yeah.

Well, I would actually, okay. Well, I do want to hear. So if you're listening and you do this, I want to know how, how does that go for your dog or your cat? I just know, I don't know. I can't imagine a cat. Um, would one of your cats do that? People can't even brush their cat's teeth at home very often.

Dr. Angie Krause (13:03)
I don't brush their teeth at home and they wouldn't, I mean, I would love to. I wish I could tell you I did that every day, but I don't. They don't, but they let me do the perio care. Do you have a bottle of that? No, cause they're all gone. Yeah, sorry.

JoJo (13:13)
Mm-hmm. No, Angie, we just talked about this. I

sold it out. Dr. Angie is so funny. She's been pushing perio care. Not pushing perio care, but all of a sudden there's this mass need for perio care and I've sold out of it. And I was like, oh no.

Dr. Angie Krause (13:21)
Yeah.

Well, it's for all the people like me, which are most people that are like, I would like to be doing something for my cat's dental health. Cause both of my cats have little spots of gingivitis and they won't let me brush their teeth in any like regular way. And, and I'm to be honest with you. I don't think that I could remember to brush my cat's teeth every day. I'm like trying to make sure the kid's teeth are brushed and like their braces and permanent, fixtures in their mouth are okay. Like I can't do the cat's teeth.

but I'm such a fan of the perio care because you can just put it along the gums. so that's what I think is great for cats. And so I don't, I'm not sure anyone. I have one.

JoJo (14:06)
And our kitty toothbrushes though. If your cat

does allow you to do this, these toothbrushes, I would use this on a small dog too, for sure. Just don't tell your dog that they made them for cats.

Dr. Angie Krause (14:18)
yeah.

for it that's called a Ryrecat. Yeah.

JoJo (14:25)
Yeah,

they're so cute. We have these in our shop. You should look. And the periocare. If you go today, when you're listening to this, it will be there. There will be periocare in stock. Just not today, April 3rd. But yes. Okay, there's a mid-level. Let me go to this. So between, I almost said the name of this place, but between the anesthetic-free dentistry, even calling it that.

Dr. Angie Krause (14:33)
that's right. Yeah. Okay. Yes.

JoJo (14:51)
We should call it something different.

Dr. Angie Krause (14:53)
⁓ cosmetic dentists. It's not even dentistry.

JoJo (14:56)
Yeah,

exactly. The dentistry piece needs to be dropped.

Dr. Angie Krause (15:00)
cosmetic grooming?

JoJo (15:01)
Your 45 minute tooth brushing session? I don't know. Your tartar removal? Yeah, I don't know it. Yeah, they're scaling. Yeah.

Dr. Angie Krause (15:04)
Well, but they're not using a toothbrush. Yeah. They're scaling. They're scaling. It's a 45

minute. It's an awake scaling.

JoJo (15:14)
Okay, rebranded. If you want to do your awake scaling. Did you know this place in Longmont called the Pet Dental Clinic?

Dr. Angie Krause (15:22)
I just heard about them and were they amazing?

JoJo (15:24)
My friend used them and was,

she's like, how have you not heard about this? Because anesthesia, dentistry is under anesthesia. They are, they're pricey for good reason. And you really should, should, I use that word, have it once a year, your pet should. Mostly, that's not always true. Yeah, sometimes more, sometimes less. But like general rule of thumb.

Dr. Angie Krause (15:35)
Yes. Yeah.

Well, depending. Depending on the pen. Yeah, depends on the... depends on the dog. Yeah.

JoJo (15:50)
at least an annual.

Dr. Angie Krause (15:51)
Yes, have someone look at their teeth every year. But some dogs.

JoJo (15:53)
Yes, which I was going to say was a positive

of your, what did you just call it? Scaling of your scale. You're somebody's looking in your pet's mouth and looking for loose teeth fractures.

Dr. Angie Krause (15:58)
The awake scaling.

Yeah.

Yes.

JoJo (16:05)
tumors, the other things. that is gold to have somebody doing that. So I'm just going to say that's a plus. But this place is so inexpensive and that's all they do is dentistry and vaccines.

Dr. Angie Krause (16:06)
Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, I love it. I checked out their veterinarians. did a like a, some low key stalking And I mean, it seems like they have good practices. I haven't been there yet, but man, I appreciate their services. thought that was, that was great. I mean, they're meeting a need and I'm sure someone has a reason why they don't like that, but it's an important need.

JoJo (16:23)
Yeah.

Well, they did the pre-anesthetic blood work. They had someone monitoring. And she came out so much less than she would have. And it was her veterinarian who recommended them to help cut costs. So I thought that was interesting too. But I mean, it's $500 for dogs and $450 for cats and ferrets.

Dr. Angie Krause (16:52)
Yeah.

You know what? That's not that much less than our prices at Boulder's Natural Animal. And that's probably why we, yes, we do so many dentistry is because Dr. Brockman doesn't want to make things like that, that the pets need frequently that inaccessible. but that's nice. I have heard about them and that's nice to know that they exist slightly cheaper.

JoJo (17:04)
Really? You're that inexpensive?

Yes, but they also have like a seven or eight month wait list. That's to tell you, she just happened to get in because she got put on like the call if something gets canceled. So she went in like three days later, but she was on like the schedule for like September or October.

Dr. Angie Krause (17:25)
whoa.

Okay, so if your dog has a fracture, that's not the place. Can't wait seven or eight months. Okay, yeah.

JoJo (17:42)
Yeah, it's not the place. This is like your routine type of thing.

But yeah, I thought it was interesting that it wasn't kind of an in-between, but I love that you are being accessible in that space. Because it is really hard to justify doing a dentistry sometimes. It can feel really financially hard, which we have a dentistry episode. If you're worried about dentistry or want to understand, go way back. Scroll way back in our episodes. I don't remember when it was, but it was a good one.

Dr. Angie Krause (17:52)
Yes, and we do a lot of dentistry.

JoJo (18:09)
And then we did just talk about anesthesia. Yeah.

Dr. Angie Krause (18:09)
Yeah, you can go to our website. Yes,

you can go to our website and go to our podcast page. And then you can, there's a search function because Jojo and I are never going to remember the number of the episode or like, we won't know any of that, but you can search like dentistry or anesthesia. Cause we just recorded an episode about anesthesia and how to know if you're veterinarians doing it safely and how worrisome it might feel.

JoJo (18:16)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So if

that's the reason that you're choosing anesthetic free dentistry is because you're afraid of anesthesia, go listen to that episode. If you don't understand why, or nobody has taken the time to explain why a dentistry is really important, go back to the dentistry episode. We go into length about why that's important. So, and I didn't mean to shame anybody. If you felt shame, is, that was not my intention. I just was, I was floored by the marketing.

Dr. Angie Krause (18:48)
Yeah. Yes.

yeah, the marketing is extremely unfortunate. And effective. I know, if you don't want to be a terrible person, you better take care of your dog's teeth.

JoJo (19:03)
and effective.

If you want your

dog to live two years longer, like, ouch, yeah, of course I do.

Dr. Angie Krause (19:13)
I know.

Yeah, no one's saying like, no, I don't want to do that. I don't care. ⁓ but.

JoJo (19:22)
No, and $295,

y'all, is not that cheap when you can go get one for $500 or $600, which you might end up having to do anyhow.

Dr. Angie Krause (19:29)
Yes, but I wanna leave everyone with my recommendations of kind of the meet in the middle place where you can take care of your pet's teeth, but you're not brushing them every day. Obviously, if you can brush your cat or dog's teeth every day, do that, A plus plus. Gold star on the sticker chart for you. But if you can't, there are two things that are really easy to do. First, look in your pet's mouth once a week. Like maybe like when they're...

hanging out with you, you're Netflixing on the couch and they're asleep, just look in their mouth, get to know what's normal for your pet because then you're gonna be able to see when something's broken or like if there's a growth. And if you wanna do one step above that, go to our website, Boulder Holistic Vet and get some perio care. And you can feel like a hero, you just put it on your finger or on some gauze or whatever and you just put it along the gum line.

of the teeth and that's all you have to do. If you want to do it a couple times a week, you could do it every day. You could also just do it once a week while you're looking in your pet's mouth. And that's going to give you a solid B, B plus grade on taking care of your pet's teeth.

JoJo (20:42)
but neither are a replacement for seeing your veterinarian and having that oral exam.

Dr. Angie Krause (20:49)
No, although, can I complicate what you just said? Can we go on a tangent? Sometimes dogs that need a muzzle in the clinic or cats that are really not into me touching them, I don't get a good oral exam. And there are times where people at home can do better than me. So.

JoJo (20:51)
Absolutely.

I think people

at home, you are your pet's best advocate. Absolutely.

Dr. Angie Krause (21:12)
Yes, absolutely.

Snap that picture of your dog's teeth and send it in if you're worried. I mean, send it to your veterinarian. And you can send it in to us too, but we might not be able to say much about it if you're not our patient. So go to Boulder Holistic Vet, grab the perio care. If you want to be an A++ student, you can get this ryer cat toothbrush. We have it too in really cute colors.

That's it. And then leave us a comment. Tell us what you think about anesthetic-free dentistry. Tell us your concerns.

JoJo (21:43)
Or you're not, like does your dog or cat love it? I wanna know.

Dr. Angie Krause (21:47)
Yeah, maybe so. Okay, see you later. Bye.

JoJo (21:49)
Okay, bye.