Aurora Rutledge, who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was shocked when she saw her adopted Great Dane having 70 teeth, which are 28 more than the breed usually has.
When she brought Loki, the adopted Great Dane, to the veterinarian, she was handed a $770 USD bill after the surgery was done.
Loki is currently one-year-old, and when Aurora brought him to the veterinarian for his routine check-up, and both Aurora and the vet were shocked when they discovered the extra teeth in his mouth.
Loki underwent surgery, in which 21 teeth were removed. He is currently recovering from his surgery inside Aurora’s home and is currently placed on a soft food diet.
31-year-old Aurora Rutledge, who is also a bar owner, said, “I had taken him to our local vet as a routine check-up 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.”
Aurora added, “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 then said that Loki was diagnosed with Hyperdontia.
She then added, “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.”
When asked about how Loki is right now, she said, “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.”