Baltimore City K-9 “officer” down after $1900 root canal
February 13, 2008
Here’s wishing a big “get well soon” to Bobby the dog and the officers at the Baltimore City K-9 unit, who are sorely missing his contributions in drug-finding, gun-sniffing and apprehending, or rather, biting suspects. (Note: the picture above is not of Bobby himself.)
Every week I flip through the city Board of Estimate’s agenda looking for story ideas, and this week, on page 32, I ran across a dog-related item. As all our regular readers know, we here at the Daily Record are, if not all card-carrying members of the Maryland SPCA, concerned pet-lovers and animal rights activists.
The item read:
On January 16, 2008, Officer Jill Murphy took her departmental K-9 to the Animal Dental Center because of a broken right front canine tooth. The K-9 was examined and was found to have broken his canine tooth at the gum line exposing a nerve. The K-9 needed emergency root canal surgery to stop the infection from spreading and to grind down the remainder of the tooth.
Grisly, right? Poor pooch!
The dog, a 9-year-old German shepherd named Bobby who specializes in drug and gun-sniffing, has been a model employee, according Sgt. Kevin Daniels of the K-9 unit, but he said that he doesn’t know how Bobby’s tooth got broken.
“Sometimes it comes with age,” Daniels said. “But he might have chewed a rock or something… Sometimes people intentionally aggravate the dogs when in kennel in the back of the car.”
Over the course of Bobby’s career, he has apprehended two suspects, which Daniels said is the only time K-9 dogs really use their teeth. In other words, Bobby has bitten two suspects.
“For a German shepherd, he still has a lot of work left in him, which is why we opted to get the work done on his teeth,” Daniels said.
Most K-9 dogs have their teeth brushed daily, Daniels added, and his own dog, an 8-year-old “drug lab” — that’s a Labrador retriever who sniffs for drugs — named Cal loves to have his teeth cleaned.
“We brush their teeth with dog toothpaste from PetSmart,” he said. “I tried to use the beef flavor, but he doesn’t like that.”
The price tag for Bobby’s root canal was $1,921, and because the Board of Estimates is the city’s spending panel, and open to public scrutiny, we decided to do a bit of comparison shopping.
A cursory survey of four Baltimore (human) dentists revealed that a typical (human) root canal costs between $600 and $950.
Cynthia Dawson of the Norwalk Animal Hospital in Norwalk, Conn., said that dog route canals, especially on the canine fang-teeth, cost about $1,800.
“With the roots on a dog’s teeth — what you see is only about one-third of what’s there,” she said. “Their mouths are made to hold and trap prey.”
The length of the tooth and its root accounts for the discrepancy in price, she said, because the operation takes about five times as long. Another reason for the price is that there are only about 70 animal dentistry specialists worldwide.
Dr. Mark Smith, a Gaithersburg-based veterinary dentist, said that anesthesia adds to costs as well. Dogs, unlike humans, have to be put under for a root canal.
The Daily Record’s own special publications assistant editor, Fran Smith (pictured at right with childhood pet “Baron von Smith”), reported that he had a root canal on Monday, and that “it wasn’t bad…didn’t feel a thing.”
“I’m pretty excited about the possibilities, about my own dental future,” he said. “[The root canal] was great and all, but I don’t look forward to any future root canals.”
Smith’s root canal, without dental insurance, would have run him about $600, but Smith is, after all, not a dog.
ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer
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A typical root canal with a specialist will usually run a human from $1000 to $2000.