The Assembly Bill 2304 in the state of California was voted down; the committee voted 6 to 0 on the bill. AB2304 was introduced by Assembly Member Martin Garrick on February 24, 2012. Basically the bill would have allowed non-veterinarians to perform teeth cleaning with scalers. A scaler is a metal instrument that is used to scrape the calculus, soft deposits, tartar, and stains from teeth.
I understand both sides of this issue; the decision factor of you personally deciding if you will use a veterinarian or someone else to use a scaler on your dog's teeth has now been taken out of your hands. I think that is probably most troublesome regarding the axing of the bill. It seems like this would be something we could personally decide to do or not. People love their pets and try to make the best choices for their care.
Veterinarians recommend teeth cleaning annually for your pets. It is an expensive procedure and most of them use anesthesia to put your pet under while performing the procedure. If you have a big dog like a Saint Bernard you know that you don't want to put them under anesthesia unless you absolutely have to.
Whenever there is evidence of gum disease or abscesses, see your veterinarian. Common sense tells all of us that.
It would be nice to have more alternatives to teeth cleaning outside a veterinarian's office. I think there are lay people that can safely perform scaling on teeth. How would you feel if you could no longer purchase teeth whitening kits from stores instead of going to a dentist for the procedure? This is a choice that you can make without legislation; seems like we could each decide this issue as well.
