A horse's teeth, just like human teeth, require maintenance, and it is recommended that a horse gets their teeth done at least twice a year. Find out why a horse may have dental problems if they don't accept the bit with help from a horse riding teacher in this free video on horse dentistry.
Hi I'm Maggie Connolly with Hawthorne Stables and we're going to talk briefly on how to check your horse for dental issues to see if your horse needs any dental work. First of all a horse's teeth just like human's teeth, need maintenance. We request that or recommend that a horse get their teeth done at least twice a year. How you can check for dental problems usually the first signs when you are riding a horse that you may have dental issues is if the horse isn't accepting the bit. If you are having problems and you feel as though the horse is hanging on a bit, pulling on you or when you do go to pull back the reins the horse is lifting or jerking its head that could be a sign that your horse needs dental work. If you are riding your horse and how a horse salivates on both sides of its mouth. If you're not getting that salivation when you are riding your horse, odds are your horse needs dental work. Some people think that a simple float can take care of many dental problems. Sometimes it may be a little bit more than just a simple float to eradicate any horse problems, any problems that your horse may have with his teeth. You can do a simple demonstration to see if in fact your horse does need dental work. What you can do is you can take the thumb of your left hand, hold on to the halter with your right hand and simply without getting bit obviously run your thumb up the top of the mouth and just slide on the top of the teeth here. If you feel any sharp edges, you can imagine if you are feeling them against your thumb what the horse is feeling on the inside of its mouth. There are also teeth that lie way back here in the jaw line and what happens with a horse is that those teeth begin to grow and what happens is they can actually hook and actually close with those hooks. A dentist, an equine dentist can come through and actually file those hooks down. What happens if the hooks do get long enough and they do happen to come together and hook together is it can actually lock your horse's jaw. So what you want to do is you want to be able to free those up so that not only the horse can eat because they do have a grinding manner in which they eat to loosen that up, but also you can imagine adding a bit to that and having those sharp edges can make it really uncomfortable for your horse which can lead to many disobedience type problems or other issues because once a horse is experiencing pain in the mouth it is going to try and evade somehow and then it will end up exacerbating itself in other areas and issues. This is Maggie Connolly with Hawthorne Stables.
