Vinny the Snaggletooth

Hello, my friends.  Sorry I’ve been away for so long.  Though I haven’t been tending to my site as much as I would like, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been on plenty of adventures resulting in lots of material just waiting to be memorialized on my blog.  My ghost-writer/typist has been a bit busy recently, so I am storing all of my thoughts in this ridiculously big noggin of mine until she has time to transcribe them.

We’ll get back to my outings soon enough, because I’ve been out there doing Dallas, but I thought I would first tell you about my recent dental woes.  If you learn nothing else from this blog, at least take away this solid piece of advice: DO NOT CHEW ON ROCKS OR BRICKS. Turns out, rocks and bricks do not encourage strong, healthy teeth. Trust me, you’ll thank me for this someday as you’re about to chomp down on a brick that’s filling a hole you dug in your backyard.  Hopefully you’ll pause momentarily and think, “I remember that time Vinny the Paw ate a brick/rock/stone and it didn’t end well for him.  I better not do this.”

Several weeks ago, my he-human was playing with me and he noticed something wrong with one of my canine teeth (a/k/a my fang).  It would seem that somehow some way I had broken my tooth from bottom to top.  Half of my fang was literally missing in action. 

Out of obvious concern for my health he took me to the vet to see what we should do about it.  The vet confirmed that my tooth was split all the way to the dentin, which made it ripe for infection and nerve exposure.  The vet then proceeded to review the options with my he-human.

Admittedly, I was just sitting on the floor watching my he-human’s own jaw drop as he heard the plans for what we could do about my snaggletooth.  It was somewhat reminiscent of the day my she-human took my kitty-sister to the feline ophthalmologist (yes, such a doctor exists) and she evaluated various expensive options for fixing her genetically-defective eyelid.

For me the options were:

Plan A: remove the tooth, give me some antibiotics and be done with it.  Apparently, since I don’t live in the wild using my canine teeth to rip raw flesh from the body of my kill, I don’t need it.  It’s merely a decorative tooth, although personally I think it makes me look fierce.

Plan B: remove the tooth, insert an experimental filler, and come back for a root canal.

Plan C: Brace yourself…get a $10,000 dental implant.  You read that correctly -- 10,000 US Dollars for a fake tooth to make my smile complete.

I am sure it goes without saying that we went with Plan C.  I mean, duh, I can’t have a three quarters of a smile.   Without my canine, my Westminster Kennel Club dreams would be crushed.  Without my fang, the dogs at the park would make fun of me.  We obviously can’t have that.  I will not be mocked!

Okay, seriously, my humans aren’t that crazy.  They do spoil me rotten, but they didn’t drop $10K to get me a shiny new tooth so that I could just break it on another rock.  Instead I got my tooth removed and had to eat mushy food for two weeks.  Hooray, me.

And, worst of all, the tooth fairy didn’t even come to visit.    

Happy tails, my friends.  Until next time.