December 11, 2021

Why do horses play in their water or dip their feed?

9 minutes

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When I took my equine cranial class, we actually had to do a head dissection. We got to see what was really in the horse's mouth and all the layers. It's amazing how just the cranial compression (when they pull back when tied) is affecting everything in their mouth and how they chew.

When the teeth have sharp edges, hooks, and waves, sometimes the horse is biting the side of their tongue. They're getting pockets of feed up in their cheek. Some horses actually wad their food on purpose. They put it up there to protect an ulcer or sore on the inside of the mouth.

The chestnut mare’s head that we had dissected, had a hole inside of the cheek wall with layers and layers of scar tissue and pieces are missing on the side of the tongue. Her teeth were all sharp hooks, like shark teeth. And they were loose in the gums like gingivitis. If you have a toothache, what are you going to try and do to get the food that is food lodged, out from there? And you know, if you have a sore in your mouth, what are you going to try and do?

When they do the pullback when tied, or get their head stuck in a fence, they shift the 26 cranial bones in their head. Their TMJ joint can't move sideways when they chew. And you'll notice this, when you look at your horse's head, the cheek muscles right under the jaw should be really thick. And the forehead muscles should be pretty flat. When you start to see those forehead muscles getting bigger, especially on one side, they're chewing more up and down on that side of their mouth. Kind of like if a tooth hurts on the left, you're going to push everything over to the right.

In the wild, the horses don't have those issues, because they've never been haltered. They've never had their heads stuck in a fence or gone down in the trailer. So they grind their teeth more sideways like they're supposed to.

The equine dentist that I would use, would work with the horse. He’d stroke the horse, rub certain acupressure points on their face and calm them down. He didn't need to sedate them. He was so good and it was $50 to come to check your horse. If he just needed a hook taken down, he would do it. If he needed more work, it was like $100 to $150. So he would just check him every six to 12 months.

Anytime there's any kind of infection in the mouth, we do wet sloppy mash with beet

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