Sinwaan and the dentist

Sinwaan had a visit from the tooth fairy today. Dr Sarah Metcalf DVM specializes in the field of equine dentistry. She had her trailer custom made with stocks so she could practice out of it. She put herself through vet school working as a farrier and also does some endurance riding / or acts as a vet at the endurance rides so she is pretty well rounded and interesting to talk to.


First Sinwaan was measured with the weight tape (he weighs 890 and Sarah felt he was in perfect condition).



We led him up into the stocks and Sarah sedated him with 1.4 xyl, 0.6 det and 0.2 torb. That wasn't quite enough so she had to give him some more (3/4 is what my notes say) She said Arabs sometimes need a little more than other breeds, and Mules are the others that are different.

Once he was sedated she put on the speculum and raised his head up and placed it in the head support ring that hangs from the ceiling and she is able to raise and lower it as needed.

Then she looked inside and felt inside and then she had me put my hand inside and feel his teeth. She found that he had sharp points, buccal laceration, ramps, excessive transverse ridges, and diagonal incisors.



Here is a photo of Sinwaan's molars before the float. I could feel the sharp points along the edges of his teeth. His molars looked like mountains and valleys.


The pre-molar/molar interocclusal on the right PRE incisor reduction was 2.0 on the right and 3.0 on the left. POST incisor reduction was 1-2 on the right and 1-2 on the left.


Pre-molar/molar occlusal angle pre float and post float was 15 on both sides.






Here is a photo of Sinwaan's molars after the float. Smooth and ready for grazing.


Estimated percent of molar occlusion pre float on right was 50 and on left was 80! Post float both sides were 80.


Basically when you looked in his mouth, the line where his front teeth meet that should have been horizonal to the ground was at an angle so she had to do some incisor reduction to level things out and hopefully now the shorter teeth on the ends (on the top on one side and bottom on the other side) will have a chance to grow and straighten things out this next year.



He was a very good patient. He started waking up a little while she was working on him with her power tools and gave us no trouble at all. He did need more sedative so she could finish up, I have a note here that he was given "1/2" twice more throughout the procedure.



Here is a photo of Sinwaan having his incisors reduced.

After all of that grinding he needed a rinse.



He also had his sheath cleaned so that is one less thing for me to worry about.

After his dental care he was backed out of the trailer and led over to the hitching post to recover before he was put in with the herd. After about 30 minutes I led him to the round pen so he could have some space to himself and he was also on doctors orders not to eat anything for the next couple of hours.