Oscar is the world’s sweetest 8-month-old, neutered male Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. He was presented to us because the owner noticed his baby teeth did not fall out like they should have. The following picture is what his teeth looked like upon presentation.
Oscar has failed to shed his deciduous k9 teeth. Under normal circumstances, the root of the tooth is resorbed, and the crown is exfoliated, then the adult tooth erupts into its place. If this process fails, the baby tooth remains in place leaving the adult tooth no place to go as it erupts. As a result, the adult tooth is displaced into an abnormal position. In this case (which is typical of nearly all cases) the adult k9 tooth has been displaced forward.
Oscar now has 2 major dental problems: 1) His adult k9 teeth are interfering (hitting each other) causing significant tooth wear and pressure and causing his mandible to be pushed to the left when he closes his mouth.
Because of this, when Oscar closes his mouth his lower right k9 tooth has to rest to the inside of the top right k9 tooth. This is causing a traumatic pocket in the soft tissue of his palate which is painful.
Here’s one more look with his mouth closed.
Here is the dental radiograph of the area:
The entire root of the baby tooth is still present which is why the tooth didn’t fall out.
The 2nd problem that Oscar now has is the certain rapid development of periodontal disease due to the crowding of the baby tooth and adult tooth.
For these reasons, we very delicately and surgically removed the entire baby tooth and decided to use active orthodontic force to move the adult tooth back into its normal position.
After 2 weeks, Oscar came back to have his braces removed and this is the result:
Here is a before photo just to compare: