Wet chin - don't know what to think

[ysy]

Hi everyone,

Need some advice here. For the past week, I've been noticing that Kelly (my chin with major digestive problems but no dental history) has a wet chin intermittently. What I meant by that is that it doesn't happen everyday, actually there's no pattern to it. Sometimes I come home from work and she has it, or she's fine when I get back, but I leave the house for dinner and by the time I come home, she's wet. The degree of wetness is quite bad, and it starts by the side (sometimes both sides as well - again no pattern) and goes under the chin. Her paws and chest are dry though.

Is this a sign of dental problems? I had initially thought she was just playing with her bottle as she does that sometimes, but I've never seen her chin that wet so frequently. How does a drooling chin actually look like anyway?

I should probably also add that Kelly's diet is a little unusual. She's mainly on CC (so soft food), with free choice timmy and oat hay, and a pinch of alfafa everyday. She also gets a small teaspoon of pellets (that's around 10 pellets or so) which she vacuums up.

On the bright side, she's her usual self, eating, drinking, playing. Her weight hasn't dropped, and I'm pretty sure she wiped out most of her oat hay.

What do you guys think? Should I get her to a vet for x-rays? I know for a fact that she has an extremely high tolerance for pain.

 

[ysy]

Oh i forgot to add, Kelly has really been through a lot so i would like to spare her the ordeal of being put under for x-rays if possible.

 

[ticklechin]

If the chin is on soft food the teeth could very well be over grown causing the drool. Chin teeth can grow 1-3mm a week when not ground down by chewing hard food so any chin hand fed for more than a few weeks most likely needs a filing.

 

[ysy]

Thanks for the info Dawn, but the thing is she's not totally on soft food. She does consume quite a bit of hay of different textures (timmy, oat, alfafa, wheatgrass). She especially liked the oat and I think that should wear down her teeth better than any pellet would.

I think I'll change her water bottle to the ball-bearing type, she might need to work a bit harder to get at the water she wants, but I'm doing the elimination thing first, if the problem recurs over the weekend, I'll take her in for a check next week.

p.s. She was dry yesterday