As anyone who tends to critters knows, there's a whole lot of routine care that must be executed in order to make sure your beasties are living their best life. As a homesteader, the vast majority of animal care and maintenance I take care of myself, both out of necessity and for financial reasons. For instance, when I first got goats in 2003, there wasn't a vet in North Idaho who took care of goats in their practice. Boy, has a lot changed, but that my friends, is another blog post.
Anyway, I'm rather proficient at hoof trimming, wound care, dietary issues, and castration, among other things, but there are some things that I prefer to leave to the trained professionals, and teeth floating is one of them.
What is teeth floating and why is it necessary you might be thinking at this juncture? Well, horse's teeth never quit growing, and as they age they can develop these grooves and ridges (not all horses, there are always exceptions in the animal world) that sometimes can interfere with proper chewing and digestion. There's also the possibility that the ridges they develop can puncture their gums and cause abscesses or pain to the beasties as they eat. Let's just face it, anything with teeth usually can benefit from dental care.
That said, my daughter has this paint mare, Gemma. Other than a few pieces of paper, we really don't know that much about Gemma's history, so when my friend called up last month and said she and our vet were scheduling a teeth floating party so we could all split the ranch call fee for the vet, you can bet your last two dollars in your checkbook that I said I was in!
Of course, that meant that I needed to trailer Gemma the 13 miles to my friend's farm for the event. It also meant that I had to separate her from her partner in hay-tinged crime, my gelding Kula. As I am a firm believer in the sentiment that all creatures need to be taken out of their comfort zone on occasion, I was all sorts of smiles as I went out into the frozen waste Wednesday morning to hook up the horse trailer with the Hubs.
Ten frozen digits and only one back up redo later, I had the trailer secured on the truck's hitch and walked over to the round pen to collect Gemma. Both she and Kula had been cooling their heels in the round pen for two days as they decided to go on a walk about to my neighbors and Kula engaged in a little breaking and entering by walking up on my new neighbor's porch. I gotta give props to the new folks though, they loved the invasion and the horses. I blame the cute floofy winter coats and soft noses.
I strode in the round pen to halter Kula first so my hubs could hold him while I walked Gemma out. He must have been holding a grudge for the imprisoning for he swung his butt towards me and by the flicking of his ears I saw that the heathen was thinking about kicking at me.
He regretted that decision. A good five minutes of enjoyable for me lunging later he licked his lips, dropped his head, and walked right up to me full of repentant energy. My smile had grown much larger by this point. Gemma, who had enjoyed a nice lunge thanks to Kula walked right up and put her nose in her halter, she got extra ear scratches for her obedient amiability, and before you could say get r done I had her loaded in the trailer.
Down the road we rolled, even enjoying a bit of trailer ice capades on the slick corner just down the way. Honestly though, it was a beautiful, sunny day, and we really did have a nice soundtrack for our ride thanks to Gemma screeching because we had left Kula behind.
Her anxiety lasted until we got to my friend's arena and our beloved vet injected a sedative into Gemma. She went full stoned. Her eyes had that lovely look of complete Yo bro, you got any munchies out there bliss. Sedation for teeth floating is a nice thing, for the horse has to wear this medieval looking mouth device that holds their jaw open for the dentistry magic to happen.
My vet, Dr. Jenni, looked in Gemma's mouth and told me, "It's special in there, Kat." Which is Jenni speak for, this horse's teeth have never been done. I replied that I kinda figured that as we didn't know where the girl had came from or much about her history. It was then floating time. The apparatus for horse teeth floating looks like an industrial sized dentist drill, a three feet long, two or three inch in diameter tube that really isn't too loud considering what it does, which is file down overgrown horse teeth. I really prefer modern teeth floating, as the old way was to use a rasp and file the teeth down in that matter. The drill method is much less, well just less all the way around.
And in about ten minutes time Gemma's dental work was finished. Not only were her molars attended to, but also her wolf teeth as it was determined those had never been tended to as well. Good times.
You know what though? The ride home was much more quiet. I can only imagine the psychedelic kaleidoscope the trailering home must have been for Gemma. I hung out for a bit at my friend's house to let the sedation wear off some before I loaded and brought the mare home, but I am betting she had quite a story to tell Kula when I put them back in the front pasture!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's probably will never get floated in any way, shape, or form, iPhone.
