Friday, March 28, 2008

A Visit from the Dentist

I got a surprise phone call from our equine dentist this morning. He was in town and wanted to know if we had any horses to do. Well...yea...we have tried getting him to come since DECEMBER!!
So lucky for me that I was home and happened to be in the house when he called. I really like this guy. He is so good with the horses, gives them breaks so their jaws don't get so sore, explains everything that is going on in your horses mouth and has all of the latest tools. So I forgive him for being extremely busy and am grateful that he FINALLY shows up.
Getting Rip to "say ahhhh......"

Rip had a few sharp points and a bit of the "wave" going on but he was easy to do and took it like a champ. Such a good boy...The denstist was surprised to see he still had his wolf teeth. I was just as surprised because the vet usually pulls them when they geld. They fell out in dentist's hand when he wiggled them.
And then there is Moon....Ughhhh...This horse has the worst mouth ever. This is the second time we have had him floated...in a year. My little pin-headed speed demon has what they call a shear or scissor mouth. Meaning his teeth are not level. They close at an angle making it difficult for him to chew his food properly and next to impossible for him to eat much hay. Mr. Dentist has nearly remedied this problem and says that by the next float(in 6 months) that it should be fixed. Yayyy - having to feed this galoot as much grain as it takes to keep him looking decent is expensive. Moon is not as nice about it as Rip... It took 2 doses of "you are very, very sleepy" juice to keep him from jumping forward onto Mr. Dentist's feet. And then he about fell over when his head was released(maybe he is the reason Mr. Dentist takes his sweet time coming back?). After being dosed 2X's Mr. Dentist recommends leaving him tied until he wakes up - so he doesn't try to eat something and choke on it.
Moon was snoring... LMAO

About an hour and a half later his head was coming up - but he was still very sleepy. Rip was back to his normal self.
Ohhhh-that sun feels good...

***As for the unsafe wire panels in my corral - I tore down part of the corrals last summer because we are rebuilding everything and had to piece it together when we brought horses to town. Old bred mare should not be with anyone. Rip and Moon fight constantly so they had to be split up and winter came and I am NOT digging postholes in frozen ground. So when I get my beautiful new continuous pipe fence installed this month I can take this old pieced together crap down.
This last picture is for Mikey over at The Horseshoeing Housewife - how do you like this rack???

These are the longhorns kept at the Ft. Worth Stockyards. I guess they use them when they have the cattle drive down the main drag there. Aren't they beautiful?

8 comments:

Rising Rainbow said...

A visit from the dentist can be a tough day for a horse. It looks like yours all weathered it well. I have found that sometimes wolf teeth come in later than expected and in my herd sometimes they don't come in at all. (which is fine by me)

Carroll Farm said...

Funny stuff. And may I say that is one nice rack. lol

Mikey said...

OH man, that IS a nice rack :) Wowsers. You don't wanna be impaled by THAT. Geeezus
Love the dental pics! Reminds me, I need to make that call too. Got an old girl dropping food constantly and the vet just can't float her enough.
Cost me a small fortune to get an equine dental specialist out here... but it's gotta be done! Thanks for the reminder :)

Anonymous said...

Wow - the dental pics were really interesting. My great-great grandfather was a "horse dentist" back in the day. You should see the scary tool from back in that era!

And, the rack on that long horn is truly impressive.

Callie said...

Love the longhorn!

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

I loved reading about Mr Dentist's visit and hw 'drunk' your horses got from the 'sleepy juice' They looks so....peaceful. tee hee

Did Mr Dentist think you were a little wacko taking pictures of the procedures, and did he roll his eyes when you told him it was for your blog?

(been there, done that! hehe)

Nuzzling Muzzles said...

I'm so glad that you took those pictures of the visit from the equine dentist and explained the process. I had made a note to write up a post about teeth floating by hand filing vs. power tools, but it looks like I many not have much time this week to do the research. I think your post covers it well, so you did the job for me. ;)

BrownEyed Cowgirl said...

Yes Twinville, he did give me a funny look. I really wanted to get more pictures of his tools and him working on the horses, but Moon was being a stinker and I had to hold him the whole time. And then I did get a little embarrassed by the dentist's reaction to asking if I could take pictures and only took the one.
A lot of people around here don't even know what a blog is much less think that taking pictures of such ordinary things should be interesting.