Animal Care Hospital - Fayette County Veterinarians, Dental, Dogs, Cats, Horses, Livestock

While several performance procedures are performed on horses, there is no evidence to support these practices, and recent research indicates that these performance procedures maybe harmful to horses.

Performance Procedures that a routinely practiced include:

Wolf Teeth Extraction: These teeth are vestigial cheek teeth that are commonly present in front of the 1st upper cheek teeth. They can also be present on the lower bars. Tradition encourages the extraction of these teeth to prevent interference with the bit.

Canine Teeth Reduction: The canine teeth are fighting teeth in male horses. (You may see small canine teeth in some mares.) They erupt in the 4 year old and grow long and sharp as the colt matures. These teeth serve no useful function in domestic horses, and the crowns are routinely shortened, rounded and smoothed to prevent injury to the tongue, other horses, and the horse's groom. The described indications for this procedure are questionable, and documented cases of tooth infection secondary to this procedure have been reported.

Bit Seats: The front edges of the 1st cheek teeth are rounded and smoothed to prevent the bit from pinching cheek tissues against these teeth. While this procedure was first described over a century ago, no evidence support the performance of applying bit seats, and documented cases of tooth infection secondary to this procedure have been reported.

While ACH continues to perform Wolf Tooth Extract on most bitted horses, we do not perform Bit Seating, and rarely perform Canine Tooth Reduction on selected patients. The risk of iatrogenic tooth damage precludes the routine application of these procedures.