I would have posted this earlier but my laptop was in for repair and my cellphone was not recognized by UHH programming. For those not familiar with horses, their teeth are different from ours. We have incisors, bicuspids and molars, horses have only incisors and molars and there is about a 6" space between with no teeth which is how we can put bits in horses mouths without interfering with their teeth. A horse grinds any grass or foliage he may eat with his molars. They grow continually and are ground down by the chewing action so they stay relatively the same size. But they also, on occasion, grow sideways and are not ground down. This creates spurs which can irritate the inside of their mouths so equine dentists grind off these spurs so the horse can chew his food without pain.

Today, as SENSORLOUPE has nicely shown, Rosie is tranked, an appliance is inserted into her mouth in the gap between her teeth to keep her mouth open and the equine dentist grinds down the spurs with an electric grinder. Most horses don't mind this process but those who do are tranquilized to keep them calm.

It used to be quite a bit different. A rasp was used to file down the spurs. The dentist would use a coarse rasp and reach in and file on the teeth and then dip it in a bucket of water. You could see chunks of teeth swirl in the water as he did this. I thought this would drive my horse crazy but he actually like it and opened his mouth for more. On my first horse, 30 years ago, my dentist didn't use tranquilizers or an appliance. He would put his hands in the horse's mouth and rub his gums to relax him. Then he would proceed to file down the spurs. I'm not sure today's methods are any better, but they are faster, safer and require less finesse than earlier. Sadly they are also quite a bit more expensive due to inflation. Large animal vets who treat farm animals ar e generally more reasonably priced than small animal vets. When it comes to shots and medications, they will sell you the meds for you to administer and they make the equivalent of house calls which small animal vets definitely do not!

Sorry I rambled on so long, didn't start out to do that.