I just learned something about doggie dental hygiene and thought I'd pass it on FWIW....
An acquaintance has several dogs, all small breed...most long haired Chi's....regardless.....he had been taking his dogs for the type of teeth cleaning that's done without anesthesia...now, if this goes against anyone else's experience with the same thing, please don't feel bad about contradicting me or saying what your experience has been.....I'm just telling what he told me happened to his dogs.....
Apparently, they just "scrape" the tartar down (or this is what I understood him to say) but it gets under their gums, so they end up with bigger problems....and his dogs (a couple of them) had to have ROOT CANALS
.
This has made my decision to be more fastidious about dental hygiene even stronger; I can't imagine having to deal with that! Max HATES me trying to clean his teeth, but I'm going to have to do it AND I'm getting some Petzlife ....probably both the gel and the spray at least at first. I was hesitant to have him put under anesthesia for tooth cleaning, but I'll probably do it at least once to get his teeth really cleaned initially and then I'm going to try to do it all on our own.....I think they know when their breath is really bad and they don't feel so good about themselves...and probably their teeth hurt or something.