To start off with, there are no horse dentists in Egypt and
probably none any closer than France. Our farrier does a pretty good job
(better than the vet actually) and he was asking today about electric tools
for doing the floating. Now, my immediate private response was that while
electric tools make the job easier, they also make it easier to make bigger
mistakes. Maybe I'm just being an alarmist...
It is my opinion that powered floating devices are responsible for the early
death of thousands of older horses who would normally have survived—healthy,
fat, and happy—for years. I've seen far too many equine senior citizens
whose caring owners notice that the horse is starting to have a little trouble
keeping their weight on using the same rations as have previously sustained
them.
The concerned owner hires a teeth floater who shows up with a drill-powered
floater, looks in the horse's mouth, shakes their head, clucks "shame, shame,"
and promises to fix everything.
The idiots then proceed to "flatten" the bite and end up grinding away all
the useful masticating surfaces until the horse can no longer do much more than
gum its food. A minor condition problem, easily remedied, turns into a serious
decline with the horse slowly starving to death.
I won't let a technician near my older horses with anything but a manual
float, and strict orders to do nothing more than "take off the points."
It isn't that they are a bad idea. It is that they vastly amplify
mistakes to where a mediocre technician becomes a lethal technician.
