Posted by Geoff Tucker on Wed, May 19, 2010
The opinions and views of this blog is for information and entertainment only and should not be used as a substitute for seeking advice from your veterinarian about your horse and your situation. Specific advice may only be given after a valid veterinary - client - patient relationship is made.
Have you noticed that some horses are wimps with a low or nonexistent threshold for pain while others seem to tolerate all sorts of pain. This seems to be reasonable because if I placed a pebble in your shoe and an identical pebble in your friend's shoe then sent you both running, one of you would stop and cry while the other would continue to run.
Pain perception is a unique and individual feeling and the response to this pain can also be unique. With oral pain, some horses work through it while others flip over or bolt away.
One of the main reasons I use medication in horses I float is because the horse cannot tolerate the pain from the cheek ulcers caused by the sharp teeth. By adding a potent analgesic medication, the horse can then relax and allow the process to be completed.
In fact one of the reasons I DON'T drug 9 out of 10 horses (statistically over the past several years) in my practice is to see the release from pain the horse experiences as I float. It is the juice we live for in floating. We get that spot and the horse licks the lips and lowers the head. They take a step forward and lightly touch their nose to my elbow. Then they shake their head in relief. Ahhhh - it is what we live for in equine dentistry.
It is not how sharp the teeth are, it is the threshold of pain that determines how often to float a horse. There are other factors as well. Horses under 5 years of age have a dynamic mouth with soft teeth and the shedding of 24 milk teeth over 36 months. A few older horses have "flabby cheeks" (see the picture below) which can make floating the horse almost impossible without medication. The smallest bit possible along with rounding the first cheek teeth is essential for these extremely sensitive horses.
Each tooth needs to be addressed. If the last upper tooth is missed, the sharp edge driving into the cheek can make riding or turning the horse difficult. If one or more sharp edges are left on any tooth then the tongue will avoid the area. This leads to tooth disease, unusual tooth wear, and premature tooth loss. Severe pain may also cause the horse to have difficulty chewing.
In our equine dentistry practice our goal is to remove all sharp points that cause oral pain. Other dentists believe in balancing the jaw or adjusting the bite of the incisors. But in my experience, the removal of pain is essential. With the horse chewing 10,000 to 40,000 times a day (documented), then in 10 days, a horse chews on average a quarter of a million times. If each chew movement is painful, disease and premature loss will result. No pain yields a healthy mouth. If you are spending time and money training your horse, then make the bit experience a pain free one.
More information can be found at The Equine Practice Blog Site.
Thanks again to Barn Mice for featuring my blogs this month. One more next week - any suggestions? Doc
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Posted by Geoff Tucker on Sun, May 09, 2010
The opinions and views of this blog is for information and entertainment only and should not be used as a substitute for seeking advice from your veterinarian about your horse and your situation. Specific advice may only be given after a valid veterinary - client - patient relationship is made.
Angela Walkup owns and produces videos on her web site HorsegirlTV. She found me via Twitter and contacted me because of the style of equine dentistry we do - Equine Dentistry Without Drama™
This was a really fun interview because she couldn't believe that Melissa could float her horses without "drama" and drugs. There are a few glimpses of her floating but just look at how calm the horse is.
We are grateful that Angela found us and is helping to spread our message of our style of equine dentistry. Please return the favor by going to her site and spending some time there. In this still frame from the video, Melissa is using the technique of using the hand in the mouth as a speculum as she guides the float blade into the nooks and crannies.
Be sure to watch to the very end for my 1 second of hamming it up.
Blog 100510 by
Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a
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Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a
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Posted by Geoff Tucker on Wed, May 05, 2010
The opinions and views of this blog is for information and entertainment only and should not be used as a substitute for seeking advice from your veterinarian about your horse and your situation. Specific advice may only be given after a valid veterinary - client - patient relationship is made.Before I give you the number one reason you should NOT float your horse, I need to acknowledge a few things.
First, I would like to thank
Barn Mice for featuring my blog on their site. They pick someone who they think is interesting and has something to say and then ask them to contribute weekly for a month. So May is my month. Thank you for the opportunity to spread my opinion on equine dentistry, which you will soon find is a lot different than the rhetoric given by the "modern" equine dentists.
Second, for those of you who do not know me, I am an equine veterinarian (
The Equine Practice) who was a horseman before I became a vet. Five years away from school on a Thoroughbred breeding and training farm helped shape my horsemanship skills. In 1983 my mentor at Cornell showed me how to insert my hand into the horse's mouth without using any speculum. Since then I have floated over 43,000 horses so maybe I might know why you should NOT float your horse's teeth. Are you interested?
There are two questions we need to try to answer: 1) what is the purpose of floating teeth? and 2) how can you tell if it has been done well?
From my experience the ONLY purpose of floating teeth is to remove all sources of pain. Everything else is secondary such as balancing the jaw and reducing the incisors. A fact that was observed and documented was that horses chew between 10,000 to 40,000 times a day. There are 86,400 seconds in a day. If we pick an average of 25,000 chews a day, then about a third of the day is spent chewing.
If the sharp points found on every tooth of every horse's mouth create painful ulcers of the cheek or tongue, the horse will chew in a way to avoid this pain. And what is the purpose of chewing? It is to form a bolus of food that is acceptable for swallowing. In another good study, horses with various degrees of bad dentition were given the same diet. They concluded that as long as the food got past the mouth, all feed was digested the same. But you who have mucked stalls know that most horse poop looks the same. We didn't need a study for that! What it also says is that kernels of corn in the manure is not a teeth issue but a lack of effective digestion.
Another important point is that the tongue needs to be able to move freely within the mouth to clean it as well as to stimulate and strengthen the attachment of the teeth within their sockets. Where this tongue movement is limited by sharp points, pathology occurs including local gum infections and loosening of teeth with premature tooth loss.
So removal of pain is why we float the teeth, but how do you tell if it was done well on your horse? This is actually tough unless you can go inside and inspect the job yourself. But I have found that the horse will tell you. In other words in most horses, if all the points are addressed, your horse should be more comfortable in chewing and in bit response. If you continue floating regularly then your horse should remain comfortable. If after floating your horse still shows bit discomfort or if he still tilts his head and lets grain spill out, then it is possible they were not floated well. But not always. Other factors need to be considered such as nuchal bursa inflammation, cervical vertebral lesions, and other things located outside of the mouth.
So what could be the reason NOT to float your horse? Simply this. Once you have had your horse floated and all sources of pain removed, he will now know what normal is. To keep him happy in the bit you will need to repeat the floating on a regular basis. Because in the next 86,400 seconds your horse will chew another quarter of a million times and the sharp points will return.
Blog May 5, 2010 by
Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a
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Blog by
Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a
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