Teats (Crack in):
Symptoms: A bitch, when nursing puppies, often suffers from the teats cracking; the parts become swollen, inflamed, and very painful.
Treatment: Keep clean with boracic lotion, and anoint night and morning with boracic ointment. A few grains of bicarbonate of potash, mixed with the food, cools the blood.
Teeth:
Dogs, like most other mammals, have two sets of teeth. The first are temporary, and, from their whiteness, they are often called the milk teeth; they are twenty-eight in number. The second set are permanent, and therefore not deciduous; they are forty-two, and sometimes forty-four, in number.
A set of teeth consists of three different kinds. Those situated in front or anterior part of the mouth are called the incisors, and those placed immediately behind the incisors are called the tusks or canines, and behind those are the molars.
Each tooth is divided into three parts. The free, or part that is seen when looking into the mouth, is called the crown; then there is the neck or constricted part, which is encircled by the gum, and divides the crown from the fang or root, which is inserted in a cavity (the Alveolus) in the jaw-bone.
Each tooth is made up of three different structures. The external, or enamel, which gives the new tooth its beautiful white appearance, and consists only of a somewhat thin layer, and covers the crown of the tooth only. Immediately underneath the enamel, is situated the ivory or dentine, of which the tooth, including the fang, principally consists. In the centre of the fang is a foramen, or small cavity, containing the pulp, consisting of a membrane nerve and small blood-vessels to supply nourishment, etc., to the tooth.
The incisors, twelve in number, both in the temporary as well as in the permanent set, are for distinction divided into nippers, which are the two centre ones; the intermediates are those situated between the nippers and corners, the latter being placed next to the tusks.
The crown of an incisor tooth presents three prominences—a middle, which is the strongest, and two lateral. On the internal surface of the tooth is noticed a slope, somewhat resembling that found in an ox’s or sheep’s tooth. The root is well developed, longer than the crown, and flattened on both sides.