A friend of mine brought in an adorable four-month-old puppy named Johnny.

A small-sized dog sporting a rough, fawn liver and tan coat and long thin legs, which are well-proportioned to his slim body. When you look at Johnny, you cannot be sure whether you’re looking at an unusually tall chihuahua in the wrong colour coat, a small-sized wire-haired English fox terrier or a Jack Russell cross.

Whatever the ancestry, Johnny is a masterpiece to behold, three quarters of which is quite fitting since his owner is an artist. My friend certainly has an eye for all things beautiful.

Johnny was bought a few days ago and all had so far gone really well. As a typical puppy would, he never stopped playing, running and jumping. And yet, he had suddenly started to refuse to eat.

During my initial examination, all the clinical parameters were good: he was alert, his temperature was normal, his respiration was regular and he had no signs of dehydration.

We also confirmed that he had no vomiting and his last stools were normal. However, upon examination of Johnny’s mouth, I could see that despite having a normal bite, on both sides of his mouth he had clear signs of blood in the teeth sockets of the baby canine teeth, which he had evidently just lost. While the quality of a dog’s bite is usually a matter of importance for aesthetics, the loss of baby teeth and resulting symptoms become more of a medical one.

The way in which a dog’s teeth come together is referred to as its bite. In most dog breeds, the normal and desirable bite is the scissor bite. In a scissor bite, the front teeth, called incisors, of the upper jaw come into contact with the incisors on the bottom jaw. The concept of the scissors in describing this formation comes from the way the pre-molars and molars, meet down the sides of the mouth.

Puppies, just like humans, suffer from teething problems

In brachycephalic dog breeds, an undershot bite, which would be a defect in other dogs, is actually the correct bite. Brachycephalic dogs include pugs, Pekingese, bulldogs, Boston terriers and other short-nosed dogs.

An undershot bite occurs when the lower jaw is markedly longer than the upper one so that the lower incisors overlap the upper incisors. The reverse of this is the overshot bite, where the lower jaw is markedly shorter than the upper one, causing a wide space between the upper and lower incisors. This bite is abnormal in all dogs and all breeds.

Paradoxically, the bite that is referred to as a level bite is regarded as aesthetically undesirable in all dogs. This type of bite means that the incisors of the upper and lower jaw meet up at the teeth edges so that they constantly grind against each other. Inevitably, they tend to get ground down with age until only the stumps of teeth remain.

As a matter of course, your veterinarian will examine your new dog to ascertain what kind of bite it has. Just like humans, puppies are born without teeth, but will have two sets of teeth in their lifetime. The first set, called baby teeth or deciduous teeth, will start to erupt at about four weeks of age and the entire first set should be in place by six or seven weeks of age.

This is a good enough reason to start offering solid food to puppies as early as four weeks of age to wean them off their mother’s milk by the fifth week and avoid injury to her with those needle-like baby teeth.

The presence of baby teeth in your dog’s mouth prepares the jaw for the eruption of the second or permanent set of teeth and, in all, your dog will end up with 42 teeth.

The eruption of the permanent teeth occurs at different times between three and seven months of age. The incisors are the first to be changed, then the canines, the pre-molars and finally the molars.

If any of the first set of teeth aren’t lost when the permanent teeth erupt, this is known as baby teeth retention. The most important consequence of this is that the eruption of the permanent teeth is disturbed and an abnormal tooth position may result.

If retained baby teeth are removed by your veterinarian as soon as they become apparent, complications later in life are usually prevented. Another problem baby teeth retention can cause is the food could become lodged between the permanent and baby tooth, which can cause gum infection and bad breath.

In the meantime, during those first few weeks and months of development, puppies, just like humans, will suffer from teething problems and will want to dig their teeth into just about anything.

There are various teething toys you can purchase which your puppy will appreciate. Alternatively, gum massage, chewing on ice cubes or on a wet piece of cloth that has been chilled in the freezer, are often mentioned as possible remedies when puppies go off their food due to gum sensitivity.

If their lack of appetite lasts more than 24 hours, a quick visit to your vet would be in order to get your puppy checked out.

With Johnny, no baby teeth needed to be removed since they were all shed naturally. But the gums were sensitive and painful, so a mild analgesic was prescribed. I’m told his appetite has bounced back along with his playfulness.

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Dr Martin Debattista is a veterinary surgeon.