How often should a horse see the dentist?

Every 6 to 12 months, and never less than once a year. That’s what the British Horse Society recommends for routine dental checks and rasping, done by a vet or a qualified equine dental technician. Most healthy adults sit at the annual end. Youngsters and older horses usually need more.

It’s one of those jobs that’s easy to let slide, because a horse with a sore mouth often looks completely fine. The BHS’s own campaign on this is called No Pain? Check Again, and its awareness pack cites research suggesting up to 70% of horses have undiagnosed dental problems. So the interval matters more than the signs. This post covers both, plus who is allowed to do what in a horse’s mouth in the UK, which is less obvious than it sounds.

How often should a horse see the dentist?

The BHS dental awareness pack puts it at 6 to 12 monthly checks and rasping by a suitably qualified practitioner, meaning a vet or an equine dental technician (EDT) registered with the British Association of Equine Dental Technicians (BAEDT) or a Category 2 member of the Worldwide Association of Equine Dentists (WWAED). Its teeth and equine dentistry page gives every nine to 12 months for adults, varying for older horses or those with a known problem, as your vet or EDT advises.

The reason it has to be regular is that a horse’s teeth keep erupting through most of its life. They wear down at roughly 2 to 3mm a year from chewing, and the tooth below the gum keeps pushing up to replace what’s lost. Horses evolved to grind rough forage for most of the day. Stabled horses eating hard feed chew less and differently, so the wear goes uneven and sharp enamel edges build up on the cheek teeth. Left alone, those points can cause painful ulcers on the cheek and tongue.

So the routine visit is mostly maintenance: take the points off before they hurt, and catch anything else while it’s small.

How often do young and older horses need their teeth checked?

This is where the interval moves most, because the mouth is changing fastest at either end of life.

Young horses. The BHS recommends foals are checked for developmental problems, and says a dental check from 18 months to 2 years is essential before any groundwork starts. That’s often when wolf teeth turn up: small, non-functional teeth just in front of the first upper cheek tooth that can interfere with the bit, and are often removed in young horses. Between about two and five, a horse is shedding its baby teeth (caps) and the permanent ones are coming through. The MSD Veterinary Manual gives average eruption of the permanent incisors at two and a half, three and a half and four and a half, with considerable variation. Petplan Equine’s dental care guide suggests checking young horses every six months while that’s going on.

Older horses. The BHS pack says older horses usually need checks every six months. Their teeth get less efficient at grinding, they can develop large overgrowths, and eventually teeth simply run out and are lost. An owner booklet on caring for your horse’s teeth, published by MSD Animal Health and hosted by the University of Liverpool’s equine service, suggests moving to six-monthly from twelve years, or sooner if the horse has abnormal dental conformation.

Known problems. A big overgrowth is often reduced over several visits rather than one, so the sensitive inside of the tooth isn’t exposed. That makes the gap between those visits a clinical decision, not a calendar one.

What are the signs a horse needs its teeth done?

Pulling together the BHS and the Liverpool booklet, the signs to watch for are:

• Quidding, dropping balls of part-chewed hay or feed
• Pouching food in the cheeks, or food packed between the teeth
• Slow, fussy or reluctant eating, or refusing feed
• Bad breath
• Long fibre or whole grain in the droppings
• Weight loss you can’t explain
• Headshaking, or resistance and evasion against the bit or bridle
• An unsteady head carriage when ridden
• Excessive salivation
• A facial swelling
• Discharge or a smell from one nostril, which can come from a tooth root
• Chewing on the same side every time
• Choke or colic, where poor chewing has left food badly broken down

The awkward truth is the last item on the BHS list: nothing noticeable at all. A horse with a painful tooth will chew on the other side and can keep its weight, so a horse eating well tells you less than you’d hope. That’s the case for the routine check.

Weight loss is the one to take most seriously. If your horse is dropping condition, the Liverpool booklet’s advice is to contact your vet in the first instance, not just book a rasp. Teeth are one common cause, but not the only one, and a horse that’s losing weight needs the whole picture looked at. Tracking it every couple of weeks with a tape and a fat score is covered in how to weigh a horse without a weighbridge and how to body condition score a horse.

Call your vet the same day for a facial swelling, a smelly discharge from one nostril, or a horse that has stopped eating. A horse that is choking, with feed and saliva coming down its nose, or showing signs of colic, is an emergency.

What happens at a horse’s dental check?

The BHS pack sets out a routine most yards will recognise:

1. Questions first. Age, history, how the horse eats, and any problems under saddle or changes in behaviour. The findings get recorded.
2. A look at the whole horse, then the head, the incisors and the soft tissues, checking for symmetry and swelling.
3. Sedation if needed. It relaxes the horse and the tongue so the mouth can be examined safely and properly. An injected sedative can only legally be given by a vet.
4. A gag (speculum) holds the mouth open, the mouth is washed out, and the head may rest on a stand.
5. A full examination with a bright head light, a dental mirror, and picks and probes to check for gaps, cavities and other disease.
6. Rasping of sharp points, overgrowths and uneven wear, by hand or with motorised instruments.
7. Rinse and recheck, including the incisors, then follow-up advice.

It helps to have the horse stabled and settled, or somewhere quiet and sheltered away from field companions. Don’t feed just before the visit, and have water ready, warm in winter. If your horse is sedated, the Liverpool booklet says to keep food and water away until it has woken up enough, and your vet will tell you how long.

Do you have to be a vet to be an equine dentist?

No, but this is the part that catches people out, because what a non-vet may legally do is limited. The Liverpool booklet warns that people who aren’t regulated, or who just call themselves “equine dentists”, can’t legally do the same work as a vet or a qualified EDT. Under the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966, diagnosis and treatment in a horse’s mouth counts as veterinary surgery, with some exceptions. The British Equine Veterinary Association’s page on current regulations on equine dental procedures groups the work into three categories.

Category 1: anyone with recognised training. Examining the teeth, removing sharp enamel points and small overgrowths (up to 4mm) with hand rasps only, removing loose caps, and removing tartar. No qualification is required, and the BHS notes there is currently no legal requirement for qualifications to rasp a horse’s teeth.

Category 2: qualified EDTs only. These are for an EDT who has passed a Defra-approved exam, which in practice means BAEDT members or WWAED Category 2 members. They include examining and recording dental abnormalities, removing loose teeth or fragments with negligible attachment, palliative rasping of fractured teeth, and using motorised instruments to reduce overgrowths and remove sharp points. Removing erupted wolf teeth is also on the list, but only under direct and continuous veterinary supervision, with the vet there throughout. BEVA is clear that these are still technically acts of veterinary surgery, allowed for qualified EDTs under what amounts to an amnesty, and not permitted for anyone without the qualification.

Category 3: vets only. Everything else, including any new procedure, by default. That includes any extraction not on the Category 2 list. BEVA describes these as illegal for anyone else to perform.

Sedation sits apart from all three. Sedatives are prescription medicines, so only a vet can supply them, and an injected sedative is given by the vet. A qualified EDT working alongside your vet is completely normal. What you want to avoid is anyone using power tools in your horse’s mouth without the Category 2 qualification. Ask whoever you book which body they’re registered with, and check the current BAEDT or WWAED membership list rather than an old certificate, as BEVA advises. If you’re unsure about anything you’ve been told, ask your vet.

Can you tell a horse’s age by its teeth?

Roughly, and less well than the charts suggest. Up to about five it’s fairly reliable, because it’s based on which teeth have come through. The MSD Veterinary Manual’s guide to ageing by teeth gives the permanent central, middle and corner incisors at about two and a half, three and a half and four and a half, and says permanent teeth are typically complete by five. After that, it says, ageing by teeth is open to inaccuracy.

The traditional markers from there on are:

• Cups, the dark hollows in the biting surface of the incisors. They wear away through a horse’s middle years, and the MSD manual says they’re gone from all the incisors by about 12.
• Galvayne’s groove, the dark line down the upper corner incisor that old age charts read off like a ruler. The MSD manual says it, along with the so-called seven-year hook, is “variable, inconsistent, and thus of little value” for ageing.

Teeth wear at different rates in different horses, so two horses of the same age can look years apart in the mouth. If you need a real age for a horse with no papers, a vet’s estimate is the best you’ll get, and it’s still an estimate. If the horse has a passport, check the date of birth in it first.

Where the technology fits

None of the above needs an app. Your vet or EDT will tell you when to come back, and they’ll keep notes. What owners tend to lose is their own record, so “when were his teeth last done?” ends up being answered from a text thread.

In Stride, Dental is one of the reminder types, alongside farrier, vaccination, worming, bodywork and vet. When you log one, you can choose Routine rasp or Dental check as the label, and the app suggests a next-due date a year on. Once you’ve logged a couple of visits, it uses the average gap from your own horse’s history instead, so a six-monthly horse gets a six-monthly suggestion. You can always set the date yourself. A push notification comes three days before, on the day, and once if it goes overdue.

You can also log the visit itself as a Dental vet record, with a note and attachments: a photo of the dental chart, or the PDF your vet or EDT emailed. Dental records show on the horse’s health timeline with vet visits, farrier and feed, and Stride’s farrier post covers the same idea for feet.

What it won’t do is look in the mouth. There’s no dental observation in the app, so for quidding or bad breath you’d log Off food or Nasal discharge where they fit, or write it in a note. It doesn’t record weight as a number either. It keeps the dates and the paperwork together, and leaves the diagnosis with your vet.

If you take one thing from this: find out when your horse’s teeth were last done and book the next one now. Don’t wait for quidding to tell you, because plenty of horses with a sore mouth never do.