And you thought your dentist was bad

This morning I called the vet clinic where I shadow to see what the schedule was like for the day. Nicki goes "oh yeah there is plenty for you to do, I think I'm going to send you with E.B. (the newest vet there) to help with dentals." and I thought "oh shit." Dentals are not very fun and a lot of work but Nicki couldn't go and so me it was. There were 5 horses all together, 2 were really good and the other three had their challenges.

For those who don't know about equine dentistry at all: first the vet drugs (sedates) them up a lot because otherwise there's no way in hell you'd be able to do it all. One of the horses today had to be drugged 3 times b/c he was too awake and then he was leaning waaaaaay forward and with three of us shoving at him refused to move backwards. So after sufficient druggage the vet puts a massive speculum in their mouth and rachets it open. We then put their very drugged head onto this ring which we can adjust the height of and they rest it there. Sort of like this:

Seems fun eh? So there is generally the vet who is shoving power tools into the horses mouth to smooth out their teeth as in this:

So like the dude in blue there and the girl on the right in this one:

That was pretty much what I did. It doesn't look so bad in those pictures but it can be quite taxing because the horse is usually so drugged that their body is leaning all over the place to keep their balance and thus their head and neck move and you have to keep them straight and upright so the vet can actually do their teeth. If they start to wake up too much then they struggle and that's a whole nother battle. If they wake up too much they get more drugs. So that was most of my day today. And then I had to hold this little beast of an appy who wasn't mean or anything but he when he decided he was going somewhere no one was stopping him so he almost ran me over like 3 three times. Between the dentals and the appy my shoulders are going to be very sore tomorrow I think. Now, aren't you glad your trips to the dentist aren't like this?