Read all about our latest visit from the equine dentist, and what our ponies had to say about it.

1. What’s that big metal thing?

Equine dentistry requires specially designed instruments and equipment. This can range from equine dental speculums, floats, and rasps for horse dental work, to equine dental blades and horse teeth extraction forceps. The dentist will often also use a special dentistry head torch. All of this can look pretty weird to our ponies!

2. You’re going to put that where?!

Open wide! To be able to inspect and examine a horse’s teeth properly, a gag is used to ensure that the horse’s mouth is held open. The mouth will also usually be rinsed with water to prevent any food material affecting visualisation.

3. This feels weird…

Just like when humans sit in the dentist chair with their mouth wide open, horse dentistry can feel quite bizarre for our ponies. Luckily at their latest visit, most of the boys were very well behaved, with Angus and Bill probably objecting the most!

4. Wow, look at my lovely teeth

In total, mature male horses normally have 40 teeth – that’s almost ten more teeth than the average human adult! Keeping our ponies’ teeth healthy is an important part of our horse care routine, and we were pleased to find out they were all fine and okay for another year.

5. When will you be back? (hopefully not soon…)

Just like us, horses need to have an annual visit from the dentist. This is very important as domesticated horses don’t have as rough a diet as their wild friends, which means their teeth can become sharp and cause discomfort.

See you next year dentist!