Fur Flies Over Cleaning Pets’ Teeth : Dog Groomers Fight for Right Reserved for Veterinarians

Among the great unanswered questions in this busy capital is this one:

Should the teeth of the family dog or cat be cleaned by a highly trained (and expensive) veterinarian or by the local animal groomer over in the shopping center?

Finding an answer to this riddle has so far taken more than 18 months and has engaged the energies of three state agencies and a Superior Court judge, as well as several lawyers and lobbyists.

The state Board of Examiners in Veterinary Medicine, in its zeal to protect the public interest, has even used “undercover dogs” to catch groomers who, the examiners claim, were practicing “illegal animal dentistry.”

The Board of Examiners argues that cleaning teeth is highly skilled work that should only be done by veterinarians or by “animal health technicians” working under the direction of a vet.

When a vet does the cleaning, the animal usually is anesthetized, because digging below the gum line to remove tartar is painful and also because the cleaner doesn’t want to be bitten.

(Cats are a special problem because of an “increased propensity for hostility” when their teeth are cleaned, Sacramento-area veterinarian Richard Barsaleau said.)

When Cayenne, a 7-year-old yellow Labrador retriever, had her teeth cleaned at the Greenhaven Veterinary Hospital in Sacramento recently, she whimpered and struggled as gas anesthetic was administered.

“Some dogs go down hard and others just kind of drift off and that’s it,” veterinarian Robert Sahara said.

Cindy Hult, the animal health technician who did the 45-minute cleaning under Sahara’s supervision, said Cayenne’s teeth were “basically OK--not bad at all.”

After the brownish tartar had been removed from the surface of the teeth with an ultra-sound device called a “cavitron” and from below the gum line with a curet, the teeth were polished and treated with fluoride. Cayenne was then put in a cage to sleep off the anesthetic.

Serious Health Problems

Cayenne’s dental experience was uneventful, but sometimes antibiotics must be administered to treat infections. On other occasions, a dental examination can lead to the discovery of serious health problems.

“Many diseases start through periodontal disease,” Barsaleau said. “That’s why we don’t want unqualified quacks doing the job.”

While they might not care for Barsaleau’s descriptive language, some groomers agree with him.

“Cleaning teeth is not a groomer’s forte,” said Barbara Morgan, owner of Pets-R-Us in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael. “We haven’t been trained to do that.”

But other groomers believe that they are just as competent to clean animal teeth as veterinarians and point out that, in most cases, they do it at much lower cost.

Patti Alexander, proprietor of the Pampered Pooch in Stockton and a central figure in the dispute, said the veterinary medicine examiners are “full of beans” when they say anesthetic is needed to do a proper cleaning job.

“Most of the time you don’t have to go below the gum line and, when you do, usually it (tartar) chunks off in pieces” and is easy to remove, she said.

According to Alexander, a good cleaning job can be done without administering anesthetic and she accused veterinarians of not being willing to “admit how many dogs they’ve killed while giving them anesthetic.”

The issue is money--not medicine--said Cindy Collins, a Costa Mesa groomer who also has been at the center of the controversy.

“I’ve felt from the beginning it was a matter of economics,” Collins said. “The vets feel very threatened by anybody who wants to infringe on their territory.”

Collins said she charges from $6 to $45, depending on the condition of the animal’s teeth, and she contended that veterinarians sometimes charge $100 or more for the same service.

However, a survey conducted by Bakersfield veterinarian Richard Stiern found that the average cost of a tooth-cleaning, complete with anesthetic and antibiotics, ranged from $57 in Kern County to $91 in Orange County.

The Greenhaven Veterinary Hospital charged Cayenne’s owner $48 for cleaning.

The dispute began in 1987 when the Board of Examiners in Veterinary Medicine asked groomers to stop cleaning animals’ teeth because this was part of veterinary practice, as defined by state law.

“They (groomers) told us to take a walk,” said Dr. Alan H. Edmondson of Huntington Beach, president of the Board of Examiners. “They said what they were doing was cosmetology, not dentistry.”

When the Pampered Pooch’s Alexander ignored board requests to “cease and desist from the practice of animal dentistry,” as Gary Hill, the board’s executive officer, put it, the examiners decided to take action.

“They sent in an undercover dog,” Alexander said with some irritation. “It was a cock-a-poo with a false name that didn’t really need its teeth cleaned at all.”

As soon as Alexander finished cleaning “a little bit of tartar” from the teeth of the canine, an investigator from the Board of Examiners burst in and cited the groomer for the criminal misdemeanor of practicing veterinary medicine without a license.

However, the San Joaquin County district attorney declined to prosecute.

“He said, ‘I’ve got rapes and murders and you want me to prosecute somebody for unauthorized canine teeth cleaning?’ ” Hill said. “That wasn’t too exciting to him. That’s a problem we have with district attorneys.”

Alexander fought back with a request for an injunction “barring them from harassing us,” she said. On several occasions in early 1988, the matter was considered by Stockton Superior Court Judge K. Peter Saiers.

‘Manual Scaling Devices’

Saiers decided that Alexander should be allowed to continue cleaning animal teeth with “manual scaling devices” and with toothbrushes, gauze sponges, cotton swabs and dentifrices, but not with the ultrasound cavitron device.

Saiers also noted that existing statutes were vague and suggested that the Board of Examiners might want to propose clearer language about what constitutes acceptable veterinary practice.

After holding a public hearing and receiving much written testimony, the board, in October, 1988, adopted a new resolution that would prohibit groomers from cleaning animal teeth with any kind of hand instrument, either above or below the gum line.

Five of the six examiners voted for this regulation, but Examiner Dennis M. Warren, a Sacramento attorney, voted against it because he said no evidence had been presented that groomers injured animals by cleaning away tartar above the gum line.

Proposal Rejected

The Board of Examiners sent its 5-1 decision along to the state Department of Consumer Affairs, which has the authority to approve the new rule.

But Michael A. Kelley, the department’s director, rejected the proposed regulation in a March 22, 1989, letter in which he stated it would “preclude the public from being able to obtain a legitimate service at an affordable cost.”

Kelley also said there were other possible solutions to the problem that were “far more in keeping with the policies of this Administration,” a statement that puzzled almost everyone involved since it was not known that the Deukmejian Administration had any policies relating to the cleaning of animal teeth.

Thwarted again, the Board of Examiners has appealed to the governor, to Secretary of State and Consumer Services Shirley R. Chilton and to Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, but so far to no avail.

Legislation Planned

If all these efforts fail, the board plans to introduce legislation to exclude groomers from the teeth-cleaning business.

“We come off as the heavies in this--the ‘fat cat’ professional community trying to protect itself against the poor but honest dog groomers,” said Hill, the board’s executive officer. “But it’s really not that way at all. We’re trying to protect the consumer’s interest here.

“The consumer can’t tell the difference between sound oral prophylaxis and just a cosmetic brushing and the dog can’t tell them until it’s too late and there’s some serious problem.”

“That’s baloney,” said Alexander of the Pampered Pooch. “The bottom line is we charge $10 or $20 and they charge four or five times that, so people come to us.”