To defend myself here (a day later), I was not assigning the causality in that direction. The "Because I took care of them" clause goes with the "I get to keep them", as in "I made sure to clean them and not let them get cavities, so there aren't any problems with them staying around". I thought the English was clear enough as I wrote it, but I guess parse errors are more common than I thought.

Unless 'proper dental hygiene' includes putting stones in your mouth and trying to make it bigger.