Equine Dental Services

Rolling Meadows Animal Hospital is an area leader in providing dental health care for your horses. We are equipped to handle most of the problems seen in horse’s mouths.

If your horse has never had complete dental care, you can look forward to several benefits. Complete dental care can increase the efficiency with which your horse eats, decreasing the amount of feed lost or digested incompletely.

Correct dental care can make your horse happier by decreasing the constant pain inflicted by sharp enamel points. Correct dental care can also make your horse more responsive to your commands because of decreased pain.

All horses can benefit from dental care. Just because your horse is fat or only 2 years old, don't think dental care is unnecessary. Floating is definitely not just for old or thin horses.

We use the POWERFLOAT to do a complete dental. These floats allow us to easily take care of many problems that are impossible to correct with hand floats.

We always use a speculum to allow a complete exam and treatment. Your horse can be treated at our hospital or we have a portable set of stocks that we can use on your farm. Our portable stocks make treating your horses safe and efficient.

Our Steps in Performing Complete Dentistry

• 1. General evaluation -- body condition, problems, external exam of the head, basic external oral exam
• 2. Sedation -- 99% of the horses we treat are placed in stocks. Sedation is required for complete examination and treatment.
• 3. Evaluate incisors (front teeth) and molar occlusion--how efficiently the back teeth are processing feed.
• 4. Full mouth speculum -- this devise holds the mouth open so complete examination and treatment is possible.
• 5. Clean the mouth and visual exam -- after the mouth is cleaned, the teeth, gums, cheek and tongue are examined.
• 6. Palpation of teeth -- each tooth is then examined by feel, each surface is felt for abnormalities and the tooth is checked to be sure it is not loose.
• 7. Basic floating procedure -- We use the POWERFLOAT to perform our corrective procedures. We use these floats to remove sharp enamel points from the outer and inner edges of each tooth. Floats are also used to remove overgrown teeth.
• 8. Extraction of diseased teeth, wolf teeth and/or removal of premolar caps.
• 9. Examination of entire mouth for sharp edges following floating.
• 10. Reversal of anesthesia.

These basic steps are performed with all floating procedures. Some abnormalities we find may require extra treatment (example - flushing and antibiotic gel in periodontal pockets). Surgical extractions are referred.