Need advice.

[Julie Bunny]

Do you belief it is better to have a conscious dental with a less savvy rabbit vet or one with sedation with a more rabbit savvy vet?
Julie is 81/2 and had her first dental a few months ago which was due to misalignment of front teeth due to age according to her regular vet.
A tooth was poking her cheek in one place and one was poking her tongue. The vet who did the dental is Julie's regular vet and is the most experienced rabbit savvy vet around this area. She does do a high volume of dentals.
My concerns are with the sedation as Julie was very sleepy when I took her home and out of it all day into the next day. This vet says that she does not do conscious dentals and will only look in their mouths under sedation then do the dental while still sedated. This vet is is also not close to us and Julie hates to travel.
Julie has another vet that she saw once that is an exotic vet and is very close to us. She is book rabbit savvy but admits to not having lots of rabbit patients. She does look in the rabbits mouth and does dentals without sedation unless she needs to clip the teeth then she uses the same sedation that the other vet uses.
Julie had her teeth filed not clipped.
I am so torn as to what is best. She needs to be checked for a dental and I am so afraid of her not coming out of the sedation but also very worried about having a vet whom does not have as much experience do the dental.
Thing is the savvy experienced vet thinks the sedation is mild and safe and that dentals are routine and the less experienced rabbit vet is very cautious of sedation and thinks dentals are a big deal. Please just give your opinion as to which vet you would use if Julie was yours and why.

 

[Kipcha]

It seems odd to me that the vet would only look in the rabbits mouth with sedation...? I have never had a vet say that, we go to two main ones and both can look in their mouth without a problem.

Babbitty also gets his molars trimmed every 3-6 weeks and he doesn't have to be put under for that (Mind you, his spikes come up like little needles so they are fairly easy to just snip). The vet just puts a little thing in his mouth that keeps his tongue out of the way, put her little clipper things back there and snips them right down. And Babbitty isn't even the most co-operative bun around.

We also have Buttercup's incisors trimmed less regularily (She usually keeps them under control herself but sometimes they start getting too long due to them butting up) and her incisors are trimmed without a problem.

It's hard for me to say without actually having met the vets, but you say it is only the front teeth that need to be trimmed, right? Or do you mean its the front teeth in the back, or the incisors themselves? If it's the incisors, then this should be no problem at all, some vets that are rabbit savvy around her do it for $20. However, if they are teeth that are in the back and they need to be filed, that is a different story... I haven't had any that need filing specifically, so I'm afraid I cannot help you there.

 

[Trixie]

I'm no rabbit dental expert but I agree why sedation? My Mocha just had a molar spur taken off of one of her molars and it was simple. The vet just put a file in her mouth and Mocha started grinding her teeth, came off like nothing.

I have no other advice but go with your gut. Julie is an older bunny and I'd want to avoid sedation unless it was urgent.

Good luck!

 

[tamsin]

Does the less savvy one do many dentals? If she doesn't see many bunnies but the ones she does are all for dentals she might be more experienced than she seems I think I'd tend to go for the conscious one and see how it goes. If she's having to have dentals every couple of months and you can avoid sedation that frequently that would be good, particularly as she gets older.

 

[Julie Bunny]

It seems odd to me that the vet would only look in the rabbits mouth with sedation...? I have never had a vet say that, we go to two main ones and both can look in their mouth without a problem.

Babbitty also gets his molars trimmed every 3-6 weeks and he doesn't have to be put under for that (Mind you, his spikes come up like little needles so they are fairly easy to just snip). The vet just puts a little thing in his mouth that keeps his tongue out of the way, put her little clipper things back there and snips them right down. And Babbitty isn't even the most co-operative bun around.

We also have Buttercup's incisors trimmed less regularily (She usually keeps them under control herself but sometimes they start getting too long due to them butting up) and her incisors are trimmed without a problem.

It's hard for me to say without actually having met the vets, but you say it is only the front teeth that need to be trimmed, right? Or do you mean its the front teeth in the back, or the incisors themselves? If it's the incisors, then this should be no problem at all, some vets that are rabbit savvy around her do it for $20. However, if they are teeth that are in the back and they need to be filed, that is a different story... I haven't had any that need filing specifically, so I'm afraid I cannot help you there.

The teeth that need filing are in the back.
The vet looks in her mouth without sedation and was pretty sure that she needed a dental but said that she needed to sedate her to get a good look at her back teeth to see how bad they were. She sedated,looked then filed.
It is her back teeth that needed filing. Her front teeth don't need anything done to them. She said that her front teeth are slightly misaligned which she thinks shifted slightly due to some elderly bone loss there. She said because her front teeth are slightly misaligned her back teeth are not properly gnashing together and therefore needed some filing as one was poking her tongue and one was poking her cheek when she chews.

 

[Julie Bunny]

Does the less savvy one do many dentals? If she doesn't see many bunnies but the ones she does are all for dentals she might be more experienced than she seems I think I'd tend to go for the conscious one and see how it goes. If she's having to have dentals every couple of months and you can avoid sedation that frequently that would be good, particularly as she gets older.

Most of the bunnies that the vet with less bunny experience sees are for general health check ups which I do belief is mostly is to see if the bunny needs a dental or not then if they need an dental she schedules about half a day for that bunny.
The other vet does a ton of dentals and has started devoting Fridays just for dentals and she does one after another.

 

[Nancy McClelland]

We have a very savvy vet, and they used to sedate Stew every other month because of mis alignment and spurs--you couldn't do his any other way.

 

[Julie Bunny]

I am worried as Julie is 8 1/2. Her breed life expand is between 7 to 9 so she is on the elderly side. Any buns having dentals sedated elderly?

 

[ldoerr]

I have no advice for you. I just wanted to say good luck with whatever you do and that I hope that Julie does great and lives a few more years at least.

 

[Julie Bunny]

I have no advice for you. I just wanted to say good luck with whatever you do and that I hope that Julie does great and lives a few more years at least.

Thank you. She has been very active lately. Her arthritis meds must be kicking in as she has been binking all around and just sneaked into the garage a little while ago when I was getting her some more hay.