To me, one of the joys of having animals is caring for them. And I must admit, our "boys" and "girls" have it pretty good. Our dogs are seldom alone, and accompany us everywhere possible if they so wish, our chickens live in the Chicken Taj Mahal (so named by a visitor), and our horses get new shoes every 6 weeks. That is certainly more often than we do: I cannot remember when we have bought new clothes, leave alone shoes. But, the animals are our hobby and that's where our money goes.
One of our riding friends told us this summer about an equine dentist that she was very impressed with and she volunteered to have him come to our neighborhood and look at our horses. Today was that day, and thankfully the weather was its Arizona winter's best. Almost 60 degrees, no wind and lots of sunshine.
I was impressed with the dentist too. His horseside manner was wonderful, and he even got Buggsy, who is very wary of strangers, to melt in his hands. I had no idea how important teeth were to a horse's sense of balance, and how if that balance is not achieved, the horse compensates with his body in sometimes obscure ways.
Our horses were in good shape. Bueno did not need any care at all, but the one needing the most work was the hardest to deal with: Cody. With Cody's "not in my body" attitude when a needle is merely discussed, the dentist was only partially successful in fixing some of his problems. Cody will have to come back in 6 months or so. By then he will have had some time to think about what happened today, as well as be worked on by us, and will be more amenable to having his mouth worked on. I find that when you run into a problem with Cody you just need to give him time to digest.
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