Went in with Doc around noon, and come to find out all of the appointments today had canceled! So it was the day to work on Doc's horses. We started on a 20-something Quarter Horse who has a rare tooth disease- odontoblast odontoclast...something or another else. Basically it is a disease in which the front incisors begin to rot out at an early age- perhaps through bad cavities, etc. This horse had shown signs of the disease for a long time, but Doc had not had to resort to teeth pulling... until today of course. For anyone that doesn't know, horses have six incisors on top and six on bottom. She had very recently lost on her own the two outermost incisors on the top row of teeth. Today we pulled the bottom two outermost, as they were loose, and one had a puss pocket going on. They both had large cavities.
Now pulling a horse's teeth is not as easy as it sounds- first you have to sedate the horse pretty heavily, and in some cases block the facial nerve that runs to the teeth to stop further pain, as well as a possible topical anesthetic at the gum line. Then you use a little pokey thing (yay look at my awesome terminology), and pry the gum from the tooth as far back as possible. Lots of blood. Then you take giant clamp-like things and rock the tooth back and forth, side to side to continue to loosen it (just like a little kid does). As Doc explained, the more you rock it, the more hemorrhaging that builds up behind the tooth and helps to push the tooth out of the horses mouth (or something similar to that). This process can take up to FOUR HOURS. Luckily it only took us a combined 3 for the two incisors. The first incisor was very rotted (this was the one with the pus pocket) and snapped off halfway out. That led to having to dig in her gums to pull the other half of the tooth out. This entire time she is under sedation, rocking back and forth, occasionally twitching from the drugs, and the other intern and I are struggling to keep the float stand in the right spot, and her head straight! All in all, I think two hours for that tooth alone. The other one came out much easier, and all in one piece. After cleaning out the pockets, putting an antibiotic in it and packing it with betadine, she got to go back to her stall to recuperate, and we took a lunch break.
Once that was done, we started on another horse who, luck would have it, had a loose molar. Of course this was after I had already packed up all of the extraction tools... I'm too efficient. Got them back out and Doc had to wiggle this tooth out- it was already completely loose, but was jammed between two other molars which were keeping it in her mouth. Finally got it out, and boy did it smell! Then had to use the Drummel tool on her teeth to grind down some of her steps and ramps (teeth irregularities that can't quite be taken down with a simple hand float/file). In the last few minutes of floating, Doc was having a hard time with her head being up too high, and all of us were too tired to fix the float stand... so I ended up being a human float stand, and putting the very drugged horse's head on my shoulder while the other intern held her up (the horse was doing a drunken sailor sway). And a combination of all of these was how I ended up with blood all over my white shirt (the one day I wear a white shirt!), my pants, my arms and even on my face. I probably looked like a vampire back from a night's feed!
This is what we ended up with:
Bet you didn't know a horse's incisors were that long! The one on the left is the broken one, and the one in the middle was the one that came out alright. The rotten looking lump on the right was the smelly molar.
It was a really cool day- I have gotten to see a few molars come out before, but never an incisor, and Doc was really good about explaining it all to me (as always), so it definitely a learning experience. I am a question spewer, so everything he does I am always asking for explanations for (which I am sure probably gets annoying after awhile!). To top the day off, I finally got paid (with a couple dollar bonus!), so I have some money to put in my bank account, and to help pay for the tiger rescue costs- I leave this Saturday! Very excited.
That's all for now! Oh and my cats got two more mice :)
~Rich With Life~
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