27/09/2024
Warning for disturbing images.
We often get to hear from clients “I don’t believe my horse is in pain, he’s still eating.” The horse in these images has a very painful dental disease known as EOTRH, or Equine Odontoclastic Tooth Resorption and Hypercementosis, which was diagnosed when a freak accident caused all the incisors to break off at the gum line as they were diseased and weak. Despite this, the horse was still eating grass when our team arrived to perform the dental surgery, as can be seen in the video below.
We can't use a horse's willingness to eat to guess how much pain they're in. Horses have nerve endings in their gums and roots of their teeth, just like we do and there is no reason to believe they would not feel pain.
We thank this horse's owner for letting us use these images for this example. With Ian Bishop DVM DAVDC-Eq and Rick Bishop, Technical Assistant.