What I have learnt after YEARS of doing dentals on horses

I've been doing this job for many many years now and I thought I would share some of the lessons I have learnt along the way...

• Too often we get caught up in what is aesthetically pleasing for us, not what’s most functional for the horse.
  It's so common for horses teeth to be "over-floated". And people seem happy with this because when they put their hand in their mouth it's lovely and smooth. Refer to below..... 
• Smooth teeth feel great for you – but is that what they need to function?
  Horses teeth NEED ridges and edges to be able to grind their forage. To take that away from them can cause a lot of problems through their mouth, their jaw and down their body.
  Not to mention, if you make them too smooth you will disrupt their eruption - and this is BAD!
• What’s going on inside a horses mouth is not always reflected outwards.
  I have seen horses with horrific dental disease, and they look amazing on the outside. I have also seen terrible looking horses have very healthy mouths. 
• Just because they’re fat and shiney does not mean their mouth is healthy.
  Refer to above. This is such a common saying by people - "his teeth are fine, look how fat he is!"
• The skill of “feel” is 50% and the skill of “looking” is 50% 
  So why would you only do 50% of a job? And even then – we may need more than these two things to do a 100% job.
  To only manually float and not LOOK inside the mouth is only half a job done. Just like looking in their mouth and not FEELING it is half a job.
• Most horses do not NEED sedation for their teeth to be floated by feel – but then refer back to the above point – why would you only want 50% of a job done?
  I can tell you, cleaning out a painful, infected gap in a horses mouth is almost impossible without sedation. It really hurts! 
  We don't recommend sedation because we're "shit horse-people" (man I have heard that a lot of times) - we do it so the job is complete. So we can walk away and say "yep, we checked everything we could and did everything we could."
• Hand tools in the wrong hands can do A LOT of damage and you can do "too much" in a horses mouth.
  There are so many podcasts and posts on Facebook saying that power-tools overfloat a horses mouth. 
  Wrong.
  The person using the tool overfloated your horses mouth. And from all the hundreds of horses I have seen the ones that are commonly overfloated have been done with hand tools alone.
  It's not because the tools are the problem - it's the person using the tools.
• No amount of "wanting" a dental done on a horse will necessarily mean we can do one on them, awake or sedated. Some horses will not allow it without further intervention.
  This is for so many reasons. 
  A sore jaw, sore front teeth (pressure from the gag), poor handling, previous bad experience, pain-elsewhere. So many reasons!
• Tooth removal is not easy or simple and cannot be reversed.
  So make sure it is the last option left.
• Not everything needs to look perfect to be comfortable and functional 
  Proper management and understanding is more important than aiming for the impossible perfection.
  We have this desire for it all to look perfect - and this is an impossible standard to live by.
  Instead, focus on function. Not perfection.
• Horses are individuals.
  Thus their dental management also deserves to be individual.
• It's a very physical job!!
  Horses are large and powerful - we sometimes forget to respect that and them
• Things go wrong and we are not perfect.
  Medications have reactions. Surgery can have complications. Sometimes treatments don't work. These are all "normal" things that can happen. It doesn't mean someone did "a shit job", it's just sometimes bad luck. Mind you, we try and take precautions to avoid bad situations.

Your professional is human and you should remember to treat them as a human. We will always try our best.