The Lengths People (and Animals) will go to – for Emergency Dental Treatment

Here’s a question – At what point does the dilemma of excruciating dental pain overcome the perilous need to seek help? The answer, for one particular Siberian tiger, was when it could no longer eat.

A villager from the remote Siberian town of Solontovsky awoke to find an exhausted tiger on his porch. Alexey Khaideyev pushed the door to go-out into his yard in the morning but it was blocked. As he pushed harder, he heard a growling noise, at which point he realised what he was facing and called the emergency services.

It turned out that a female Siberian Tiger who would normally shun all human contact was clearly exhausted, hungry, and in need of urgent dental treatment. Experts are certain that she was seeking help for her dental pain, as she entered the village and quietly lay-down on Mr Khaideyev’s porch.

After sedating the tiger, conservationists from the Ministry of Natural Resources found that she had serious periodontitis and an edentulous upper jaw, making it almost impossible for her to eat properly. Thankfully, the 10 year old female is now being cared for at a sanctuary, where she is being fed a diet of minced-meat laced with antibiotics. The team say that they are doing everything possible and hope the tigress responds to the food and treatment in due course.

If there is a moral to this somewhat heartfelt story, it’s this – while some patients may have an almost overwhelming dental anxiety, their perceptions of the outcome are normally far scarier than the actual act of receiving help. Compared to the risks this tiger took to seek assistance – a visit to the dentist is a walk in the park!