Page 18 - November 2007 The Game

18 The Game, November 2007 DARINGTO DO
DENTISTRY
At issue is the question of who should be allowed to practice equine dentistry. In jurisdictions across North America, veterinary medical associations are fighting to close the legal loopholes that allow non- veterinarians to practice dentistry, claiming that floating, pulling wolf teeth, and other routine main- tenance procedures should be the exclusive prov- ince of those with veterinary degrees. And equine dentists are fighting back – in many cases, with the dedicated support of their clientele.
Who’s right?
Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
Be Careful What
One thing a writer never wants to
do as deadline approaches is start be-
moaning a lack of something to write about...especially when your work and
your writing both revolve around racehorses. Obviously the colder weather has started to numb my brain because this was the state in which I found myself the night before deadline.
There’s a turf war going on in your horse’s mouth.
is not limited to the teeth but includes examination of the oral cavity, head, sinuses, general health and nutrition. New equipment, techniques and better tranquillizing drugs enable veterinarians to provide better dental care in a manner less stressful to the horse.”
Supporters of independent, non-veterinarian equine dentists say that using a practitioner who specializes in dentistry offers more comprehensive care than they could get from a generalized large- animal veterinarian, who may only get a few hours’ worth of instruction on equine dentistry in the course of a four-year degree. Most veterinarians, they claim, get only the ‘basic basics’ in school, and that knowledge base doesn’t expand much once they’re in practice, unless they choose to focus on dentistry. Furthermore, they say, floating teeth is hard work, and some veterinarians consciously avoid it, or avoid doing a thorough job of it, using power tools indiscriminately and sometimes doing more harm than good in the process.
A self-described equine dentist named Patricia Ryan, from Saskatoon, was found guilty last year and fined for doing the latter. In order to pull a cli- ent’s horse’s wolf teeth, she tried to administer a drug called Sedivet, which she’d obtained under the counter from a colleague in the US, intravenously, and when she did not succeed in doing so, gave the injection intramuscularly (against the drug manu- facturer’s recommendation). The horse fell into convulsions. This incident is a perfect example, say veterinarians, of why equine dentistry should be the exclusive province of DVMs.
With four days to go in the racing calendar I found myself riding this morning under a full moon while the first heavy frost of autumn covered everything in a blanket of glitter. All my horses were sharp this morning, but none were as sharp as Benny, my eight year old marathoner, who snorted and pranced like a colt all the way up the pavement. Easy, Benny, I crooned, trying to soothe his frazzled nerves. But Benny didn’t want to be soothed, not with a cold snap in the air and horses galloping by and mist rising up from the infield. Bennie wanted to GO!
An equine dentist, proponents say, is more likely to do a thorough job because he (or she) has delib- erately chosen that specialty and dedicated himself to it. The sheer volume of mouths he looks into on a weekly basis gives him a much deeper back- ground and a better sense of problem-solving.
When British Columbia veterinarians, however, got the provincial Supreme Court to issue an in- junction to keep equine dentist Bill Bishop from practicing, there was a huge outcry from the BC horse industry. Bishop, by all accounts an extreme- ly competent and knowledgeable dentist (and far- rier), is currently prohibited by law from practicing dentistry, and his case has spawned organizations such as the “Animal Owners of British Columbia”, which claims that veterinarians are seeking to elim- inate an owner’s right to choose, and are motivated simply by greed and a perceived threat to their mar- ket share.
So off we went, Benny shaking his head and plunging a little before settling into his stride and starting to relax al- most immediately. Amazing, I thought to myself. A year ago when a horse took hold of the bit and wanted to run off I would immediately take a big hold and try to crank his head down. I’ve since learned that most of the time if the rider relaxes, the horse will relax too. As Bennie and I galloped along I found myself thinking of some of the lessons I’ve learned this past year, the kind of things that no matter how many times people tell you, only experience can show you what they really mean.
And they defend the rights of equine dentists to practice in the same way that they support other ‘alternative’ health-care practitioners, such as mas- sage therapists, equine chiropractors, herbalists, and homeopaths – who offer services and solutions not supplied by the typical allopathic (science-based) veterinarian.
‘Working your cross’ is a phrase it took me the better part of a year to begin to understand. I once understood this concept to simply mean tightening your cross down until your horse had his nose bowed into his chest. But the more horses I gal- loped, the more I realized some horses couldn’t - or wouldn’t - tolerate this. Some would tie up and some would run off and some would throw their head in the air, making them- selves impossible to steer. But as the months went by I began to realize that sometimes I was causing myself more problems by working my cross than by just leaving it alone. I misun- derstood ‘working your cross’ to mean all take and no give. Now I’ve learned that some horses relax much easier when you give them their head, shortening your cross and bringing them back at certain parts of the track and letting them out again at others.
But here’s the rub: like other non-veterinary health-care practitioners, equine dentists don’t nec- essarily need a lot of training to hang up a shingle and begin to practice. While there are certification programs in equine dentistry, they’re entirely vol- untary, and vary crazily from the three-day semi- nar type to multiple-year courses of study. Most trainers and owners don’t know enough about these programs to discern whether an individual equine dentist’s educational background is comprehensive, rudimentary, or somewhere in-between.
In Saskatchewan and Alberta, attempts by veteri- nary medical associations to more tightly define the scope of their practice (and eliminate those legal loopholes for non-veterinary health-care providers) have also met resistance from stakeholders in the livestock industry, who fear that the revised legis- lation would prevent them from doing procedures traditionally done on-farm, such as vaccinating and castrating calves. Don’t look for that impasse to be resolved any time soon.
Some horses get tougher the tighter you try to hold them. This has also been a difficult lesson to learn. Giving a horse its head that already wants to run away feels like the last thing you should do under the circumstances. But eventually I came to realize that I was making some of my horses tougher by tight- ening up on them more than was necessary. Even before my horses picked up the bit I would cinch my cross tight and pull it down the neck and button them down so they could hardly move. Before long I figured out that the harder I worked to hold some horses the greater their desperation to get away.
Veterinarians argue that (as a statement on the BC Veterinary Medical Association’s website reads): “As preventative health care for the equine mouth is a very important part of health care for our horses, it needs to be addressed on a regular basis .... Your equine veterinarian, who is already familiar with your horses, their health matters and their feeding and management, is best equipped to provide this care. It is customary for equine practices to keep computer records on file, which enables the prac- tice to send out timely reminders in order to help you arrange for and provide preventative dentistry in advance of problems developing.
One positive word amongst all this chaos was the announcement last fall that the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, in Saskatoon, will soon be of- fering Canada’s first accredited residency program in veterinary dentistry. The program, one of 10 ac- credited by the American Veterinary Dental College (AVDC) and the first outside the US, will be a three- year residency that graduate students will complete alongside a Master of Veterinary Science (MVetSc) degree. This new initiative will provide advanced, specialized training in veterinary dentistry, with a considerable focus on horses – and may ensure that some of the next generation of equine veterinarians is much more well-versed with the intricacies of waves, hooks, ramps, and occlusions.
But perhaps the hardest thing for me to learn and the skill that has served me the best has undoubtedly been learning the art of stillness. Time and again experience has demonstrated sometimes the best thing you can do on a tough horse is re- main absolutely still.
“The BCVMA wants horse owners to know that veterinarians are trained in all aspects of equine health care, and that most veterinarians who do any amount of horse work now have specialized train- ing in equine dentistry ... Dental care of the horse
These and other thoughts coursed through my head this morning as Bennie and I galloped into the homestretch on our second of three planned laps. By now Bennie was mov- ing along nicely, his breath exploding in locomotive snorts in perfect synchronicity with the beat of his stride. For the first day in weeks we were enjoying a nice track. Ahead of us a horse and rider galloped down the lane and Bennie picked up the bit and increased his pace.
Equine Health
By Karen Briggs
Dave Landry Photo
The issue of sedation is a big one, too. In virtu- ally all North American jurisdictions, the adminis- tration of tranquilizers and sedatives is restricted to qualified veterinary practitioners. And as we all know, the horse who willingly submits to dentistry is a rare one ... the vast majority need some sort of mild sedation in order to do a proper job of float- ing (not to mention more invasive procedures such as pulling wolf teeth, yanking off ‘caps’, or deal- ing with abscessed teeth). So equine dentists have three options: work without sedation, work in co- operation with a veterinarian who administers the drugs, or administer the drugs illegally.
“Oh well, maybe something will happen at work tomorrow that I’ll be able to write about that,” I suggested.
You Wish For
“Better be careful what you wish for,” replied my partner, who has always displayed greater wisdom than I in such matters.
by evenSteven
The Game November 2007.indd 18
10/30/07 10:59:09 AM