Dr P was our equine dentist. In my previous blog I mentioned that Skippy's #9's needed to be filled. But after super cleaning her teeth and taking xrays it was determined that her #8 on the left side was more critical. The #9's could wait (they were in Stage 1) but the hole in that #8 was in stage 2-entering the enamel of the tooth. There are 4 stages, #4 being the worst. Stage 3 enters the pulp of the tooth. Stage 4 is a fracture of the tooth. So we were told we could wait and monitor it or fill it today. Dr P said he could not tell how deep the hole was until he started drilling. We decided to have it filled today.
It turned out the the hole was 3/4" deep-almost to Stage 3. I also learned that horses teeth continue to erupt as they age, I thought the term was they continued to grow. So Skippy's cavity would be filled, her tooth would continue to erupt, her teeth would continue to be floated every year and the filling would eventually be filed off when her teeth were floated. The cavity would grow out. The cavity would cease to grow thru all the enamel, into the pulp and fracture the tooth. This is the hope. The tooth is made of stronger stuff than the filling. Just like in human dentistry a filling can have problems. They can crack and need to be replaced, or just bother the horse for a few days, or nothing can happen. So we are hoping for nothing to happen. He says most horses usually have no problems. To help relieve the pressure on that tooth he floated it up a bit. Skippy has a wave mouth. The top wave curve fits into the bottom wave curve. A float attempts to make all surfaces flat for grinding food but for a wave mouth there is always some wave left afterwards. Anyway Dr P flattened her wave up on the #8 so now the #8 on top doesn't quite meet the #8 on the bottom. This will alleviate some of the pressure on the filling but will also cause some quidding with her food. Dr P said this problem should be very slight and to keep an eye on her weight to make sure she doesn't start loosing weight. He doesn't think it will be a problem. She got some banamine to help with the discomfort from today's proceedure and we were done. The whole process took 2 hours.
In the meantime Zoe was standing around in the treatment room next to Skippy. Jim had her at first, then I had her while the drilling and filling was being done. Zoe reminded us of a dog. She wanted to investigate things, mouth things, try to eat the floor, interested in all the people walking in and out of the room. She didn't spook at anything, didn't want to run out of the room and had good manners. The only thing she did sometimes was paw at the ground but I quickly got on her case about that and she stopped. I think she was hungry because we left the barn before the horses were fed. We fed them in the trailer and that was it until we got home. And even at home Skippy had to wait a bit to make sure the sedation was worn off so she wouldn't choke on her food.
The trip home was uneventful. Back at the barn Jim did my horse chores for me. We fed Zoe, tied Skippy up 'cause she wasn't allowed to eat yet. Eventually Skippy could eat so we put her back. I bet she will be hungry at dinner time.
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| Still sleepy...yawn |
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| Back home waking up all the way |
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