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Equine Dentistry - U.F.R.D. (Upper Fronts Recently Done)

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.Oh boy, more letters that's supposed to mean something.  Unfortunately, they do mean something to me.  U.F.R.D. means I have to tell the client that owns the horse that has received this acronym that they have wasted their money.
 
Upper Fronts Recently Done means that I am checking the horse's teeth and have found that the first few upper cheek teeth have smooth edges but the rest of the mouth has sharp edges.  If it has been more than 30 days since the teeth have been floated, this may mean several things including the horse has very soft teeth.  Less than 30 days and it usually means one thing.  The equine dentist missed the rest of the mouth.
 
So this brings up a good point.  How can you tell if the floating was complete?  It is very difficult because nobody can define what is a good floating.  One dentist may say that the mouth needs to be "equilibrated" while another checks for the "lateral excursion" to be symmetrical.  What is the truth?  Logically, the only one that knows if the job was done completely is the horse.  In other words, if the horse is relieved of pain, the floating was effective.
 
So why do dentists just do the upper front cheek teeth?  Traditionally, these are the teeth most people feel with their fingers for smoothness.  But just because these teeth are smooth does not assure you that the rest of the mouth was done.  A case in point was a client whose 3 horses I did at the Wellington horse show many years ago.  2 horses were very sharp and the 3rd had overgrown teeth (hooks) in the very back.  The next day these horses performed so much better that she asked me to go to Long Island, NY to look at the rest of her horses.  I was there a week later and discovered U.F. R. D. in every horse.  The manager there actually put his hand inside a few mouths and felt what I was feeling.  He then told me that it had been 14 days earlier that the teeth had been floated.  To me this was fraud.
 
But there is more to this.  Actually, if 95% of the teeth are addressed but 5% remain sharp, then some of those horses will continue to show discomfort.  Way back in my career I was at Belmont Park in NY and had done a barn full of horses in training.  The next day I was asked back because one of the horses was still having a bit problem.  It was on that horse that I learned the technique of placing my hand AND float blade in the mouth at the same time using my "off" hand to do the work.  It was difficult for me to do this new technique, but I found the one sharp spot on the upper last right cheek tooth on the tongue side.  Removing that 1 point was the difference in that horse between discomfort and comfort.
 
So this brings up another issue - threshold of pain.  It is not the sharpness of the teeth but the threshold of pain that determines how a horse responds to sharp teeth.  While the one point on the race horse was everything to that horse's perception of comfort, I have had other horses with cheeks shredded from sharp points and it would give NO indication that anything was wrong.
 
And finally there is one more place to look for discomfort.  That place can be outside the mouth.  I have seen identified in horses with "bit issues" lesions located in the nuchal bursa behind the poll, cervical vertebral lesions, and lesions in the temperomandibular joint (TMJ).  
 
So how can you tell if your horse's teeth were done completely?  First, look how the horse responds to the floating.  Does the head go down between the rasping?  Does he shake his head as if relieved?  Most importantly, if there was a problem before floating, is it resolved after floating?  The bottom line is that many equine dentists bamboozle you with fancy talk.  My answer to the question "How can I tell if the teeth were done completely?" has always been, let the horse tell you.

Equine Dentistry Without Drama™ Articles by Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.theequinepractice.com.
Blog by Geoff Tucker, DVM is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.