At 22:34:41 on 16.06.09, HorseVet wrote:
I have a special interest in dentistry for horses. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have.

At 09:19:08 on 18.06.09, horse dentist wrote:
hi, i would be interested in knowing where you have trained for equine dentistry and how long your training was, please.

At 23:20:53 on 18.06.09, HorseVet wrote:
Hi, I have spent a lot of time over the last 6 or 7 years working alongside Bob Livock who has been the leading light in equine dentistry for over 30 years. I don't believe vets spend enough time doing dentistry to be sufficiently competent to do the job adequately so I don't try although I would hope I could do an OK job if I had to but being able to feel a good mouth is no guarantee I could get the right shape to the teeth etc myself to my satisfaction. That's not a criticism of vets - its just a statement of fact that we have to spend a lot of time doing other aspects of veterinary work which prevents us reaching the skill level required to do good dentistry. I don't believe that having the letters MRCVS after my name automatically makes me competent at everything as some seem to think. I'm too aware of how important the mouth is to the whole balance of the horse but in working with Bob I have trained my hands to see inside a horse's mouth better than most and I have seen enough problem mouths and seen how to resolve them to know what is required to sort them. I can put my hand in a horse's mouth and tell you how it behaves when ridden. The general standard of dentistry is woeful but then with the blind leading the blind in teaching it's no surprise the blind remain so. Having said that I think understanding is getting better but horses are suffering in the meantime. Much of it is political BS with courses seemingly designed to make money rather than produce competent dentists and they produce too many dentists who seem to be doing the job for financial reasons above welfare considerations. Best wishes Roger
http://www.naturalhealingsolutions.co.uk

At 00:24:29 on 19.06.09, Equine Dental Tech wrote:
Kudos to you for your reply. It's a shame that more vets don't feel the same way. I think a lot of vets don't even put their hand in the mouth, they work from sight and tell owners that the horses teeth don't require treatment. I try to be open minded about treatments, i always do the best for the horse. I certainly don't do it for the money, if that was the case it would have been a very silly career move for me. Anyhow as i said, kudos to you for your honest reply

At 07:50:03 on 19.06.09, horse dentist wrote:
kudos from me as well! we see all too often that people DON'T do a good enough job in the mouth, whether it is done by vets OR dental techs. and this is also where i fully agree with you to only use hand rasps: when someone doesn't know where and how much to take off, the chance of doing too much is much bigger with power tools. i am just saying that on some things solving the problem with just hand rasps is not acheivable. say for an example a 411 (M3 on the bottom right) that has become that high that it you can't even get a rasp on top of it (and our rasps are only 4mm thick!) our approach is to re-establish the full function of the mouth but do NOT touch the grinding surface unless to take down abnormalities.

At 22:51:08 on 21.06.09, HorseVet wrote:
Hi I'm sure many EDTs do what they think is a good job and of course not all EDTs learn through the vets but take the qualification to aid insurance etc. I'd like to think there are more than I've found out there that can do the job. Unfortunately there are many with great intentions who think they're doing a good job because they do the job as they've been taught. That makes it all the more difficult for owners to spot who is actually doing a good job. I'm sure many would be mortified if they realise the damage they do but having spent a lot of money on training it's the last thing they want to hear. However I have to call a job as I see it when I put my hand in and find problems causing the lameness I've been asked to treat. I agree there are some situations where a tooth is too high to get a rasp over and in some cases a power tool is required. My objection is against those who do "routine rasping" with power tools to get the job done in 10 minutes and try to do 30 horses in a day just to rake in the money. Best wishes HorseVet
http://www.naturalhealingsolutions.co.uk

At 22:09:07 on 22.06.09, Equine Dental Tech wrote:
i think we see eye to eye on many things when it comes to equine dentistry. People that do "routine rasping" with power tools should be hung out to dry. I prefer to look upon rasping as an art form, it's my favourite part of the job, using the power tools is a necessity for reducing front teeth and getting rid of huge hooks/ramps/atr's but i only do what i need to do with those, usually because we use as little sedation as possible the horse is much more alert after the use of power tools, that's when skill is required with the rasp. My aim with the rasp is to put a nice radius on the cheek teeth, leaving no sharp edges anywhere, all without blood, sometimes it's difficult not to draw blood because sometimes the "corners" of the teeth are so close to gingiva that it's difficult to avoid, but if i see blood on a rasp when i remove it from the mouth, i am hugely disappointed with myself. I consider myself a "horse lover" so i try my hardest not to hurt them in any way shape or form. I just wish other people operated in the same way. It's all down to awareness, if owners aren't aware then these unscrupulous people are going to continue to operate.

At 07:51:20 on 23.06.09, horse dentist wrote:
i have to agree about the over using of power tools. that is one reason why i am out almost every weekend and have an informational stand somewhere. i feel the best way to help the horse is to educate the horse owner. one of the things i tell them is to have a good look at the tools. if someone comes to your yard armed with just power tools - show them where the door is!!! the rounding of the sharp edges HAS to be done by hand rasping as i only want to round the edges by about 2-3mm. rounding so little with power tools and interfering tounges and cheek in the horse's mouth is impossible to acheive evenly and without taking too much healthy tooth. the same goes for water-cooling, i would NEVER allow anyone to use power tools without the use of water-cooling on any of our horses. the power tools create several hundreds of degrees celsius and that put us WAY WAY past the physiological "barrier" of 42°C when the changing of protein structures happen. we have done some tests together with the berlin institute for thermograpy on this and the picture proove when using water-cooling on the teeth, they have NO increase in heat whatsoever but actually get slightly cooler. the outcome of non water-cooled grinding on teeth can be catastrophic, the trouble is that for instance a thermaly induced pulpitis often doesn't manifests itself straight away and therefore the uncooled grinding is often not being spotted as the cause for the problem :( best wishes

At 08:45:48 on 23.06.09, HorseVet wrote:
Hi We seem to be largely speaking from the same direction and I would be very interested to see the results of the thermography study you mention - preferably in English as I doubt Babelfish is that great at translating technical jargon! :-) ! I guess we're on here discussing this issue because we are the ones who care. Unfortunately (I can only comment on the UK) there are far too many out there who do not do the job properly but who can talk the talk and draw pretty pictures of a mouth without the ability to do the right corrective work. It doesn't help when many are vets who set the exams and exam standard. I did the sedation for the last WWAED exams in the UK and quite a few of the delegates were failed only for me to hear later that they passed the vet EDT exams. The money the vets are charging for nothing weekends and poor training is obscene IMHO. Some lay people are training others when they can't do the job properly themselves and the result is someone who believes they've been trained and owners believe them too. I reckon on clinic days with Bob about 40% of his work is correcting problems created by others. I also hear of dubious practice where vets are giving financial incentives to an EDT to get horses sedated for dentistry. My problem is that because I recognise the importance of the mouth, I recognise in many lameness situations that it has been the cause. There is now the situation where many horses are undergoing unnecessary and sometimes drastic procedures to treat what is a secondary lameness issue to a primary dental problem without addressing the mouth because they don't know what they're feeling for. The powers that be don't want to hear that as the implications are far reaching both in clinical terms and financially. I agree that public education is the key but even then too many are scared to go against what their usual vet tells them. Best wishes HorseVet
http://www.naturalhealingsolutions.co.uk

At 10:55:32 on 23.06.09, horse dentist wrote:
it wasn't an official study, meaning not an amount of cases that would satisfy. louis (our teacher/trainer) had been told many times by students of his with a background in human dentistry (like myself) that he had to water-cool the teeth, so he contacted the berlin institute for thermography to take thermography images of treatment with and treatment without water-cooling. i might add here that he was one of the people that did NOT really want to go water-cooling because one gets wet, lol. but having seen the proof that water-cooling stopps ANY heat occuring on the teeth, he had no choice and changed all his power tools over to water-cooling a couple of years ago now. i havn't got all the images as they belong to him and the institute but i have done a quick print screen from his DVD. i have been told also been told by a austrian vet-colleague of mine that the university in vienna have done a study on water-cooling just recently. i have not been able to get a hold of that yet unfortunately but maybe you have channels as a vet that you could go through? i will upload these images to my photos as well so then you can see them more enlarged. on this first one you can see the power tool being used if you have a close look. best rgds