February is National Pet Dental Health Month, and GREENIES Brand is teaming up with pet bloggers and the American Veterinary Dental College to not only bring awareness to the issue, but also raise money to help provide life-saving oral surgery to dogs and cats who need it the most.

For every blog post written about the subject, GREENIES Brand will donate $25 to the AAHA’s Helping Pet’s Fund. And, for every use of the #VOHC hash tag on Twitter — an original post or a re-tweet — GREENIES Brand will donate $1 to the fund. How great is that?

Dental care for your pet is something that you should absolutely be doing to help keep you pet healthy, just like you do by applying flea and tick preventitive and giving them a heartworm pill. But, most of us don’t think about it that often — myself included, despite having a variety of doggie dental related products at my finger tips.

Here are some interesting statistics.

About 160 million pets do not receive any oral care and only 5 percent of dogs and cats get annual oral care by a veterinarian, according to a recent Trone research study. Yet, 66 percent of dog owners believe oral health care helps protect the overall health if their pet and 77 percent have purchased treats with a dental benefit for their dogs in the past year, according to the same study. In addition, 30 percent of those 77 percent say they’ve increased purchasing such products.

This statistic has to be my favorite, though — only 1 percent of dog owners brush their dog’s teeth. Wow. We must do better. (Again, myself and Toby included) 

So why not ask your vet to perform an oral examination on your pet during their yearly routine checkup, too? Plus, join me in making a commitment to taking better care of your pet’s teeth if you don’t already. I will absolutely being trying brush Toby’s more.