Regular visitors of our shelter have surely seen our horses and some of them are skinny, or not that skinny or overweight (For example Vipera always looks like She is pregnant). These reason for that can be old age, or not enough food or that the horse can not absorb the food. 4 of our horses seemed especially skinny recently so we scheduled a ’teeth-rasping-day’ after having consulted the vet. Some of you may look at us strangely: what can that be? Well:
Horse teeth are growing and by eating they fret their teeth. If they do not chew evenly then the teeth will not fret evenly and ridges can grow on the teeth making the chewing hard and painful. That is why at least once a year we have a check up and treatment as well.
We scheduled the teeth filing for Thursday morning. While waiting for the vet we brought Ajtony, Váratlan and Öszvér from the meadow. The fourth horse, Topáz is the 4th horse in the stall. He had suffered a palm size cut on his side that’s why we preferred to keep him in the stall where the conditions were relatively sterile. He loves stayin inside and loves eating and drinking all day long but He was not getting fat. We had a blood-test done and he is lacking vitamins and minerals in his system. So we bought him food supplements immediately which he has to get every day for a month. As the three other skinny horses also may face the same poblem we bought the supplement for them, too. It was rather expensive: a horse’s dose for a month costs more than 10 000 HUF.
But let’s go back to teeth filing. You need to know that Öszvér is one of our most reliable horses. You can do anything with him, he will never lose his temper. So I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal to bring him back up from the field. But Öszvér suspected something and I could hardly lead him to the stall because he was constantly fussing and whining and he even managed to step on my foot. Finally when we were there he couldn’t stay still: he was scratching and turning around all the time… Luckily we didn’t have to wait for our vet long and at my suggestion Öszvér was the first to get the sedatives. (At last calmness came to the stall).
Öszvér sedated :
Personally I was looking forward to the teeth-filing-day a lot because in my 15 years experience with horses I’ve never seen how it is done. I didn’t see it this time either because somebody had to hold the horse’s head and toung. I recommend this position for strenghtening your shoulder muscle but after the third horse you won’t feel your shoulders at all.
As for the tongue of the horse: it’s slippery!
While the vet was working we had Riksa and granny Gizi as fans of the free ’show’. During this time Füstös was bored to death but someone had to control the girls..
We didn’t have time for Váratlan the same day so he got rasped a week later. Somehow we succeeded in filing his teeth though he wasn’t a perfect patient.
Unfortunately, Ajtony still has some problems with his chewing because liquid food simply comes out of his mouth so he was checked again. We did not come closer to the solution . He has holes in couple of his teeth but that doesn’t explain his strange eating habit. Now we’re monitoring him closely how can eat solid food.
Magyar
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