Dental home care: Tips and tricks for pet owners

Get It!

Knowing where to begin with recommendations for dental home care can be overwhelming. This lecture aims to provide a review of the progression of periodontal disease in our patients and how dental health can be best maintained between professional dental cleanings. It will cover tooth brushing, the mechanics of dental diets, and how to help clients choose appropriate dental home-care products to best meet their pet’s needs.

This session originally was presented at AVMA Convention 2024.

Learning Objectives:

  • Participant will review the progression of periodontal disease in dogs and cats.
  • Participant will be given instructions and tips and tricks for tooth brushing that they can provide to pet owners.
  • Participant will gain perspective of the difference between types of dental home-care products such as dental diets, oral rinses/additives and dental supplements.


Heidi has been a Certified Veterinary Technician for fifteen years located in the Twin Cities metro area of Minnesota. She began her career in private practice where she developed an interest in and appreciation for veterinary dentistry. She moved on to spend one year in academia at the University of Minnesota’s Veterinary Medical Center teaching fourth-year veterinary students as part of their Dentistry and Oral Surgery Service. She then moved on to an emergency and specialty referral center working alongside a busy board-certified veterinary dentist where she currently works part-time. Heidi was accepted into the Academy of Veterinary Dental Technicians (AVDT) as a Veterinary Technician Specialist (VTS) in Dentistry in 2018. She has served on the Credentials Committee for the AVDT since that time and enjoys mentoring other credentialed technicians on their journey to become specialized. In 2022 Heidi opened her own in-clinic dental training business called Vet Techniques Training & Education, LLC where she can share her knowledge and passion of all-things-dentistry with fellow likeminded veterinary professionals. 

Get It!