# Broken k-9



## Tammy St. Louis (Feb 17, 2010)

I know this has been discussed here before , I have read up some threads on it, ( but i am gonna ask anyways) so here is the story

Vengeance is my 1.5 yr old mal a month ago came in from outside his bottom K-9 tooth was broken , I cant post a pic but there was 3/4 of tooth left , just a slab fracture, was gonna take it out, was told not to if i wanted to continue bitework with him ,,
So i took him to toronto for a root canal and they did a restoration which was tooth looking fill and built the tooth back up ,this cost me 2000.00, it looked amazing but i figured it would not hold up to bite work , the dentist said she recommended a cap from precious metals , but figure the restoration would hold up ,, 
Well it didnt, , first bite session it came off, so now i am going for the metal cap , 
i want to continue bite work with him , not because I need him to be a ring 3 dog in anyway, but he loves it and i love to train with him ,,
so what is the success you guys have had with one cap on your dog doing bitework ? 
thanks


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## Carolyn Herle (Dec 29, 2009)

Tammy,
My Bouvier Alkemi broken her upper canine last year. The break went across but then up under the gum so a lot of the pulp was exposed. I looked at the options in Calgary at the specialist and the root canal plus cap was about $6000. I opted for the extraction but the cavity was filled with a substance that hardened and fused to the bone. That only set me back about $1500. After four weeks we could resume bitework and she is fine. I didn't go for the cap as I heard of too many situations where it didn't hold. The dentist did not advise the root canal without the metal cap as the tooth wouldn't stand up to bite work.


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## Chuck Zang (May 12, 2010)

We had a GSD in our unit that snapped a canine tooth last year. We took the route that Tammy described above. He is able to do bitework just fine. I have seen dogs with titanium caps on their canines, do fine for the remainder of their careers. I have also seen them snap off again, as your re-build did. 

If your Mal is a deep, full mouth biter, then the extraction shouldn't be an issue. Good luck either way


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## Jennifer Coulter (Sep 18, 2007)

Chuck Zang said:


> If your Mal is a deep, full mouth biter, then the extraction shouldn't be an issue. Good luck either way


The dog in question has nice grips, but in FR with the kind of decoy work he will see, dogs sometimes don't get a chance to bite full and are swinging/hanging off canines for a bit before they get a chance to go in deeper.


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## James Downey (Oct 27, 2008)

Tammy St. Louis said:


> I know this has been discussed here before , I have read up some threads on it, ( but i am gonna ask anyways) so here is the story
> 
> Vengeance is my 1.5 yr old mal a month ago came in from outside his bottom K-9 tooth was broken , I cant post a pic but there was 3/4 of tooth left , just a slab fracture, was gonna take it out, was told not to if i wanted to continue bitework with him ,,
> So i took him to toronto for a root canal and they did a restoration which was tooth looking fill and built the tooth back up ,this cost me 2000.00, it looked amazing but i figured it would not hold up to bite work , the dentist said she recommended a cap from precious metals , but figure the restoration would hold up ,,
> ...


I just had the same problem. I went to canine Dentist that serviced south eastern Michigan police. Pat curry on this forum told me about them. I went there. He said for bite work. He would not cap the tooth (I asked for it), he said especially a canine, the more curve on a tooth, the more likely the cap with break at the base. He said the cops always want titanium teeth and half come back with a tooth broke off at the base. A cap does not give the tooth the ability to handle more pressure, it just protects the surface. He said, he would not pull either. What he did for my dog was root canal. Shaved the tooth down some. filled it, and put a tad bit of epoxy on the top. He said, I may need to get that bit redone if the dog does bite work, but it should hold for sometime. He shaved the tooth down so it would not take so much leverage.


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## Tonya Beam (Jun 18, 2013)

James Downey said:


> I just had the same problem. I went to canine Dentist that serviced south eastern Michigan police. Pat curry on this forum told me about them. I went there. He said for bite work. He would not cap the tooth (I asked for it), he said especially a canine, the more curve on a tooth, the more likely the cap with break at the base. He said the cops always want titanium teeth and half come back with a tooth broke off at the base. A cap does not give the tooth the ability to handle more pressure, it just protects the surface. He said, he would not pull either. What he did for my dog was root canal. Shaved the tooth down some. filled it, and put a tad bit of epoxy on the top. He said, I may need to get that bit redone if the dog does bite work, but it should hold for sometime. He shaved the tooth down so it would not take so much leverage.


 
Had this same thing done with my pit/am.bulldog. She snapped both of her upper canines. She had no problems doing bite work after this.


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## Hunter Allred (Jan 28, 2010)

My female had some enamel damage on the backside of the canine (not kennel biting style halfmoon wear, but like the enamel chipped off from what appeared to be a metal impact). Got a 3/4 crown in titanium to the tune of $2800 so we could leave the otherwise healthy tooth intact. The backside didn't seat well apparently and some months later was ripped off in my living room by a soft toy or something sliding a thread under the backside of the crown and pulling it up not unlike a beer bottle opener... the pics below might make it clearer what happened. This snapped the canine and required a full crown and root canal to fix to the tune of $4000. Insurance paid for roughly $5,500 of the total money spent. The full crown has held up well and the edge is below the gum line. All work was done by one of the best veterinary dentists in the country. Pictures in order are below:


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## Connie Sutherland (Mar 27, 2006)

This looks just like my daughter's Border Terrier's Tufts work.

He is now almost 17 and it's still holding up great. (It's looked at whenever he goes to the vet for other stuff.)

It was a big shock ($$) at the time, but it sure has maintained well, for many years.


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## Kadi Thingvall (Jan 22, 2007)

I've posted this before, but prior to purchasing Mac he was a chain link chewer, and put grooves on the back side of his canines.

First one (top) snapped off in training doing bungee work, he just barely got a piece of the suit and "ping". Took him to THE specialist in my area who did a root canal on the broken tooth, and capped the other top canine so it wouldn't break also. I asked him to shorten it before capping but he refused, said it wasn't needed.

Fast forward a year, another canine (bottom one) broke, the decoy was swinging a leash at Mac's head that had a metal ring on the end of it, hit the tooth, ... That one I didn't have anything done to.

Go forward about another year, the capped tooth is still long, 2 other canines are broken, and the last one has worn down some. Not sure exactly what happened but noticed during training the capped tooth was gone, broke off right at the gum line. In addition, the tooth was dark and their was no bleeding which a dentist friend told me meant the tooth had actually died at some point after being capped, probably from either an air pocket or something else being trapped under the cap and causing bacteria to grow.

Out of the 4 canines, the one that never broke looks the best, the one that broke and I had nothing done to it also looks fine, just short, the one that had the root canal is quite dark and the capped one that broke is also darker in color.

In the work if Mac can get a full grip the teeth are not a problem, he has big/hard grips. If the decoy can almost esquive so he just catches frontal, then the decoy twists around or moves otherwise to prevent Mac from being able to counter forward then he can have an issue hanging on, which has created a bad habit, with that type of grip he will do a fast transfer so he can get a full grip elsewhere. It's not really an issue since he's been retired for a few years and I just use him for decoy training and dog in white, but for competition it could/would be a problem with point loss for the change of grip.


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## Hunter Allred (Jan 28, 2010)

Kadi Thingvall said:


> I've posted this before, but prior to purchasing Mac he was a chain link chewer, and put grooves on the back side of his canines.
> 
> First one (top) snapped off in training doing bungee work, he just barely got a piece of the suit and "ping". Took him to THE specialist in my area who did a root canal on the broken tooth, and capped the other top canine so it wouldn't break also. I asked him to shorten it before capping but he refused, said it wasn't needed.
> 
> ...


all three veterinary dentists I've worked with said they only cap if the tooth is root canal'ed for that reason... you can no longer monitor the tooth's health easily and if a root canal is later needed, the cap is in the way. Thats why we started with a 3/4 crown, so we could still see the tooth's health and let it remain alive.

The kennel biters that get the "half-moon" crescent worn out the back of teeth are always at huge risk for snapping the canines, and younger dogs (less than 5 years old) have much larger openings in the tooth's center for the nerve, which slowly fills and retracts over the years. The dog's tooth reaches maximum strength around 5 years old or so. A broken canine (that dies or is root canal'ed) is much stronger if it happens later than if it happens as a young dog.


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