Dental issues when riding

RIDING a horse with dental issues can be tricky, schooling through pain is not advised. As a qualified dental technician, I see too many horses with dental pain being mistaken for behavioural problems.

As equine oral anatomy is complex, knowing a few basics will make it easier to understand your dental professional’s description of what they observe while conducting an exam.

There are three material components that form the tooth: dentin, cementum and enamel. Each has differing density levels – with the enamel, found in vertical columns throughout the tooth, the hardest. Within the tooth’s body is the pulp, which extends into the root. The pulp carries the main blood and nerve supply of the tooth.

The equine mouth is made up of:

Canines, found in male horses and some mares.

Incisors, these front teeth are designed to bite off forage. Once the incisors’ work is through, the tongue moves forage back to the cheek teeth.

Cheek teeth, premolars and molars, collectively called cheek teeth, grind the food and move it to the back of mouth for the horse to swallow.

Knowing what a healthy mouth looks like makes it possible to recognise discolourations indicative of potential problems. The top of the tongue can be stained brown or black from plant pigments and dirt. The inside of a horse’s mouth and lips are generally pink, but can have black pigmentation, giving some areas near the front of the mouth a spotted appearance. Gingiva (tissue immediately surrounding the base of the horse’s teeth) should be pink, redness and inflammation indicate abnormal pathology. Teeth are not pearly white, they should be cream-coloured with darker streaks or areas, mostly from plant pigments.

Horses’ chewing surfaces are not level. The upper and lower cheek teeth meet at approximately a 10- to 15-degree slope, which facilitate the strong grinding forces necessary to grind fibrous feed. The incisor teeth, which are not used for grinding, meet in a flat table surface. Abnormal wear patterns limit chewing efficiency.

‘Waves’ (the wavelike configuration of the premolars and molars from front to back), ramps, and hooks (both overgrowths of the teeth) can all cause riding issues.

According to the ‘no pain, check again’ campaign the BHS have been running, in the past, equine dentistry has been a neglected area of veterinary research and practice. Thankfully, over the last 20 years huge developments have led to a greater understanding of the problems horses experience and best practices developed for treatment. This is great news for our horses, but there is still a huge area of concern. As horses are stoic animals, they are cleverly able to hide their dental pain. Due to this, many horse owners don’t realise that their horses could be suffering in silence. This is bad news, as dental problems can seriously deteriorate unseen until the horse shows clinical signs.

The scale of dental problems is quite phenomenal as recent studies have found that up to 70% of horses have undiagnosed dental problems. This is a real welfare concern for our horses and why dental checks every six to 12 months are so important to ensure any unidentified issues are treated as quickly as possible.

The bit you use when riding should not affect your horse’s teeth. The bit should never contact the cheek teeth, although it does make contact with the bars, corners of the mouth and the horse’s tongue. The role of the bit to control a horse should put pressure on the mouth, never on the teeth. Knowing how your horse responds to the bit when it is comfortable in the mouth can help you identify possible issues in the future.