Adopting a dog is a great thing to do, and in most cases, both the dog and the new owner are left off much happier as a result.
But one woman in the US was landed with a $770 (£609) veterinary bill just two months after she adopted a Great Dane after it was discovered she had 70 teeth - around 28 more than is normal for the breed. Aurora Rutledge, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, took Loki - who is believed to be one-year-old to the vets for a routine check-up earlier this week. But the checkup turned out to be far from routine, and both the vet and Aurora were shocked by the toothy discovery in the pooches mouth. Loki subsequently had to have 21 teeth removed and he is now back home recovering on a soft food diet. Aurora, a 31-year-old bar owner, said: "I had taken him to our local vet as a routine checkup since he was a new rescue and mentioned to the doctor that the people we got him from mentioned that he may have retained baby teeth."Loki is a giant puppy and is very energetic so I hadn't had a chance to look inside his mouth myself beforehand.
"When we did get a chance to have a little look we could see he had more than normal, but we didn't think he'd have 70 teeth in there!"The vet administered dental extraction onto Loki and removed 21 of his teeth, leaving him with 49 - which is still seven more than average."It was something that massively shocked us, but we're just so glad that he is home and recovering now," Aurora explained that her doggo Loki was diagnosed with an extreme case of hypodontia. She said: "Hyperdontia is a genetic anomaly, but it is never usually seen to such an extreme as this."The vet cannot rule out that he may have this as a result of poor breeding so the rescue we got him from is working hard to track down his breeder to hopefully stop something as painful as this happening again.
"The night of and the morning after the procedure was rough he bled all over my couches, rug, kitchen, dog bed, me."We had to give him a medication to make him sleepy, so he wouldn't be up and around."Right now he's still on soft food and transitioning him to more solid kibble slowly."After this, as far as dental goes, hopefully after all is healed, he will not even notice he had so many additional teeth!"We will make sure he has his routine dental checks, especially since they did leave seven more teeth than average."Despite having to chew down the big bill, Aurora insisted that you can't put a price on the love of a dog. She said: "Rescuing dogs is not always easy - you often run up giant vet bills, but the animals are so worth it."Loki just snuggles in, and you know he feels safe, you can't put a price on that."We wish bad breeding practices would be stopped."Until they are, adapting is the only way we will attain our dogs."Good on ya' Aurora and get well soon Loki.