Rolly having his teeth rasped

Howz about this - I managed to get a vid of my horsey having his teeth rasped by my vet, Matt Waterhouse, of Arundel Equine Hospital.  Horses should have their teeth checked every 6 months, especially with a horse that is young like Rolly (or an equine veteran as well). 

Why do a horse's teeth need rasping?  Well, a horse's teeth grow continuously during its lifetime.  The act of chewing grass and other forage type materials in the way that a horse does: using a kind of lateral sliding, chewing motion in order to break the cellulose-type materials down to ease later digestion; means that the horse's teeth can tend to wear irregularly and end up having sharp edges and pointed bits. 

Obviously since our horses are not in the wild and we want them to be comfortable and live as long as possible, which means being able to eat easily and accept the bit nicely, it makes sense to file these sharp edges down from time-to-time. Otherwise symptoms such as quidding (dropping bits of food out of the side of the mouth) and being unhappy with the bit can result, which will lead to the horse either not doing so well on its feed and/or being difficult to handle.  The worse case scenario is mouth ulcers and perhaps also serious weight loss.

With a youngster, wolf teeth (seen in both mares & geldings, unlike tushes which are usually only seen in geldings) can be a problem.  Wolf teeth are vestigial premolars (as opposed to  canines) and can erupt at any age up to around 3 years of age (they are not baby teeth though).  They are usually on the upper jaw, but they sit where the bit sits in what is called as the interdental space, so of course can themselves cause bitting problems.  So Rolly had his removed about 6 months ago.  Such an operation can be done under sedation and is not difficult because wolf teeth do not have roots like the other teeth - they kind of just sit in the gums. 

So this particular 6 monthly check was to make sure the wolf teeth removal seemed to have gone okay and to check whether Rolly needed his teeth rasping again, which he did, hence the video!

For those that don't know, it may look like Rolly is in pain in the video.  In fact he isn't - horses seem to like the weirdness of the feeling of having their teeth rasped (abd it is a non-painful procedure).  If horses didn't like it they would have to be sedated to have this done, and in fact it is rarely the case that sedation is required. The device with all the metal that is conveniently holding Rolly's mouth open for the vet is called a "Haussmann gag" after the geezer who devised it.    So here's the video: