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| Say cheese (December 2005) |
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Brush up on dental care to keep your horse healthy and happy
By Dean Houghton
Three-year-old Leo, our Quarter Horse gelding, taught us the importance of equine dental care. He had started dribbling grain from his mouth at feeding time and sometimes chewed on the bit during training sessions.
So we called on Brooke Gray, an equine dentist from nearby Holt, Mo., to have a look. She quickly found the culprit. A thin sharp fragment from a baby tooth, or “cap,” was stuck in front of a premolar tooth in the roof of Leo’s mouth.
Gray selected a long stainless-steel tool and quickly removed the offending shard. “That must have been hurting you, boy,” she said as she patted her brave patient.
Our “people” dentist accuses my wife and me of of waiting until we have a toothache to schedule a dental appointment. And we quite likely could have headed off Leo’s sore jaw had we followed a recommended horse dentistry schedule. We’ve decided to put all our horses, from youngsters to the old retired mare, on a regular schedule for dental exams.
Many of our fellow horse enthusiasts are discovering what professionals on the racetrack and in the show circuit have known for years–that a good dentist can be as important to a performance horse as a good farrier. Experts agree that regular dental care not only helps maintain good body condition but also can extend the life of your horse.
Tooth doctor
Today’s equine dentist does more than just “float,” or remove the sharp enamel points, from teeth. You’ll often find that today’s equine dentist also keeps a chart that chronicles the condition of your horse’s mouth, documenting how the teeth are wearing over time and giving clues as to any problems that might be prevented. At other times, dentists must become detectives. “Horses can’t tell you their mouth is hurting,” Gray says. “But they can show you in other ways.” Those may show up as behavior and performance problems if soft tissue is getting pinched between the teeth and the bit. Horses may tilt their head or extend their tongue, or they may just become less flexible when you’re out for a ride.
Checking for teeth problems also is a good idea when horses can’t maintain weight or are dropping grain while eating. Equine are unique creatures, and a well-developed, properly maintained set of teeth is a key first step in a horse’s complex digestive process.
Horses select their food with sensitive upper and lower lips. They draw the lips back while their front teeth (the incisors) grab the forage. Molars, or cheek teeth, grind the food into small particles. Since horses do not regurgitate food like cows, this chewing action must be thorough or nutrients will not be fully absorbed. Nature boosts this chewing action by providing an offset arrangement for the molars, with the upper set of molars spread apart a bit more than the lower set. Wavy tooth surfaces and a side-to-side chewing action helps the horse get the most from grasses.
Worse for wear
That arrangement, however, also means the chewing surface of the tooth is tilted, with the inner edge of the lower teeth sitting taller than the outer edge. Over time, the inner portion of the lower teeth as well as the outer edge of the upper teeth develop sharp tooth points. That’s why horses need regular “floating” to smooth these edges. “When I have the horse’s mouth set up in the speculum, I often have the owner feel the edges of these teeth,” Gray says. “They usually are surprised by just how sharp these edges can become.”
What we feed horses may also influence how often they need to be floated. When eating grain or pellets, horses have less lateral jaw movement as compared to horses eating forages. Less jaw action may result in a greater chance of developing sharp points.
The design of horse teeth also is quite unique. Adult teeth have deep crowns, and the tooth continues to emerge over the life of the horse as the grinding surface wears off. Eventually, like a piece of chalk, the tooth wears down to a nub as the horse becomes elderly. Some “senior” diets are now available for the older horse with limited ability to process food.
Tools and techniques
Various shapes and sizes of rasps have been used over the past several hundred years to help balance and maintain the mouth of the horse. “These manual tools can do a perfectly good job today in the hands of a good practitioner,” says Dale Jeffrey, who heads up the Academy of Equine Dentistry at Glenns Ferry, Idaho. “But there is no question that technology has produced terrific new dentistry tools.”
Many horse dental specialists carry around a set of tools rivaling that of their human dentist counterparts. Pneumatic or electric dental power units drive small grinding heads made of advanced substances such as tungsten-carbide and diamond chips.
These new tools allow dentists to shape and smooth teeth with a minimum of damage to gums and soft tissue. “That makes it easier on the horse and limits the amount of recovery time after a dental session,” Jeffrey says. Equine dentists can do just about everything from extractions to fillings on your location.
Selecting an equine dentist may be as simple as checking with other area horse owners for a word-of-mouth recommendation. Or, if you want to check on-line, you can locate a dentist by visiting the American Veterinary Dental Society (avds-online.org), International Association of Equine Dentists (iaeqd.org), or International Directory of Equine Dentistry (equinedentistry.com). Your current equine vet may have the training and desire to meet your needs. Some states require licensed veterinarians to do dental procedures, while others allow lay dentists who work in cooperation with veterinarians for sedation and other procedures.
Just remember to start young. Experts say two-year-old horses should be checked a couple of times a year to see how those baby teeth are doing. Regular checkups and floating of an adult horse’s teeth each year will help make sure you and your equine friend can share a smile for years to come!
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