Horses Teeth

When purchasing new horses I like to get their teeth looked at by our Equine Dentist. Having purchased a few recently The dentist came out last week to look at Leo who needed a good deal of rasping as he had quite sharp points and had probably not had his teeth done for some time. Cleo a 17hh IDXTB Looks like she has had her teeth looked after as they were in quite good condition and Storm a 14hh welsh cob who has come on loan, his teeth were also in good condition. Magic (see previous blog) was concerning me, we have had him approx 3 weeks now and he is not eating to well. The dentist came out to see him last week. He had extremely sharp teeth which were cutting the insides of his cheek and he had lost one of his molars and two more were loose to the point of making it difficult for him to eat. Consequently the dentist came back yesterday with the vet in order to sedate him and remove the teeth along with two wolf teeth. Magic is seven years old and should definitely not be losing teeth at his age. This is most likely down to severe neglect in his life at some point but probably not by the previous owners who only had him a year but they were obviously unaware of his problems. Which explains why he is so thin and possibly anemic. Hopefully now he had these teeth removed he will put on weight and a supplement of blood liquid will help with the anemia and lack of energy.

It is so important to have horse’s teeth checked at least yearly. So many horses are written off as problem horses or people put stronger bits in them because they need more control when sometimes the horses is just running from pain due to sharp teeth cutting into his cheeks. Lush grass and grain does not naturally wear teeth down in the way nature intended and horses can develop very sharp edges. Loose and bad teeth do prevent horses eating. Wolf teeth are very small teeth that sit just in front of the molars (not all horses have them) and can cause horses incredible pain when they have a bit in, these are easily removed by an equine dentist. Pippa was virtually unrideable when we had her, in canter she would just take off after having her wolf teeth out she has become a different pony. She was 11yr old when we had her so she has probably been passed from dealer to dealer as and labelled a bad pony possibly for years when she just needed her wolf teeth out. I am not saying this is the answer to all problems but at least if you know the teeth are ok you can go from there.

Posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 1:17 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.