Tel (360) 794-9255

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Equine Dental Care

Your horse's dental is care essential for their well-being.

Horses can suffer from many dental disorders impacting feed utilization, riding performance, and general well-being.

With proper dental care, your horse can utilize feed more efficiently, maintain proper body weight, and carry a bit more comfortably when bridled.

Equine dental care is provided at your barn/field or at our clinic.

We are fully equipped to offer routine oral health care in addition to the following horse dental services:
  • Dental x-rays to identify infected and diseased teeth, retained wolf tooth fragments, and sinus diseases
  • Extraction of loose and diseased teeth
  • Geriatric horse dentistry
  • Miniature horse dentistry
  • Performance dentistry including bit seats
  • Corrective floating on abnormal/deformed mouths
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What Does Floating Horse's Teeth Mean?

Floating your horse's teeth means to rasp or file the teeth.

Floating balances the dental arcades and removes sharp enamel points that form along the edges of the teeth. These enamel points cause considerable discomfort and even ulceration to the cheeks, gums, and tongue.

The most common tools used are power floats.

A power float is a modified drill with a long shaft and rotary head. The old way of floating used long handled rasps, or hand floats, designed just for filing down the teeth. Hand floats are still used for some procedures, but power floats make the job quicker and gentler for the horse and allow us to precisely sculpt the teeth into balance.

The floating procedure is only one aspect of a complete dental health program.

A full dental examination including evaluation of your horse's teeth, palate, tongue, and gingiva should be done yearly. In some cases, a more frequent dental exam is necessary, even if the horse's teeth do not need floated.

What is the Value of Equine Horse Dentistry?

You may be aware of 'lay-people' who offer cut-rate tooth floating services in local boarding stables. While this may seem like a cheap way to address your horse's dental maintenance, in the state of Washington it is illegal for anyone other than a licensed veterinarian to perform dentistry on a horse.

It is important to note that lay dentists:
  • Are not doctors and are not qualified to perform a thorough oral examination to look for underlying disease or pathology.
  • Do not have access or proper training for safe use of sedative drugs, which are necessary to ease anxiety and relax your horse's jaw for the dental float procedure. Without proper sedation, the procedure can be dangerous and traumatic to horse and handlers and can lead to unnecessary injuries as well as sore temporomandibular joint’s (TMJ's) and masseter muscles after the float.
  • Cannot prescribe analgesics for pain control when it is needed.
  • Do not have specialized training to identify and safely treat dental abnormalities.
In addition, lay dentists cannot:
  • Prescribe drugs to treat oral infections
  • Take x-rays of the jaw when indicated
  • Perform extractions. If they do, no sedation or nerve block is performed beforehand
The veterinarians at Cedarbrook Veterinary Care have a special interest in dentistry and extensive advanced equine dentistry training.
Call our office at (360) 794-9255 today to schedule your horse's dental exam and float.

We treat the whole animal, every time.

Cedarbrook Veterinary Care offers dental care for equines in Snohomish, Monroe, Woodinville, Duvall, Lake Stevens, Redmond and the areas within that region. Our non-emergent care services also extend to Arlington, Fall City, North Bend and Carnation for care requiring a full day. If you are outside of our service area feel free to haul into to our Cedarbrook Farms facility.

Call or text us today (360) 794-9255

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Tel. (360) 794-9255

Cedarbrook Veterinary Care

Veterinarian Appointments

Available Monday - Friday.
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9812 215th Avenue SE,
Snohomish, WA 98290
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