And you thought you had it bad –

Oh, how I long to be as witty and astute as some of you guys – Sue, Rachel, Laura Maery; I’m drowning in clever buds. But I’m a working animal, so I write about non-glorious things. Like pulling teeth. Which happens to be the subject of this monologue.

Horses are born with wolf teeth. I am almost certain that wolves are not born with horse teeth. Wolf teeth are pretty much what they sound like, nasty little pointed, almost rootless fangs – not in the front where you’d expect to find fangs, but back in the middle of the maxillary ridge (that’s the top ridge – the bottom in the mandibular. I know this because I was once a dental assistant, kind of. Not for horses, for people). Like about where your last bicuspid would be.

Not my drawing.  I have links somewhere here for the sites I’ve referenced.

These are not teeth we love. In fact, we hate ‘em. Not only would they take your finger off if you happened to get your finger in there (the front teeth can do that, too, strong as they are http://www.equisearch.com/horses_care/health/dentistry/teeth_082404/), but these fangs get in the way of the bit. There is actually a natural space in the tooth ridge where the bit fits quite nicely.

Which is more than you ever wanted to know.

So, at about three years old, these little wolf guys come in, and somebody’s got to take them out. Happily, my horses’ Other Mother is qualified to do this on horses she has a vested interest in, and that’s what all this is about: Geneva, pulling teeth at my barn.

She did it with an audience – her horse ownership students and the rest of us,

and I thought it might be interesting to all of you because you’ve probably never actually seen a drunken horse before.

So here is my Hickory/Tiger/baby/junior, just about to experience yet another horse rites of passage (castration is one of those rites, but we did not take pictures of that, though we did keep the removed parts in the fridge for future study. Ummm. They aren’t there now. In case you were thinking about that bread you got from Guy -).

We did save the teeth. But we lost them. They were so tiny, and in a barn – anything smaller than a baseball can get pretty lost pretty quick. So it was a great big production over some very little teeth. Next thing is to ride my “pony.” Yeah. Maybe there’ll be pictures of that.

Additional educational note (http://www.kbrhorse.net/hea/float.html):

Equine teeth are built much tougher than ours because of dietary necessity. “Our teeth wouldn’t last six months on a grass or hay diet,” says Jack Easley, DVM, who specializes in equine dentistry. “Eating grass isn’t like eating lettuce. If you run your fingers over a grass blade, you can feel the grit on it. For us, it would be like eating sandpaper all the time.”

Thus they say: NEVER look a gift horse in the mouth.