Today was our grand finale of 2016 with the dentist. Since we like to go big or go home we had Sparky the donkey as one of our final dental patients today. Sparky is actually a champ about having his teeth floated and he’s great for the farrier. He stands like a statue to get his blanket on in the winter and he’s generally a very easy donkey to live with. We should know since he’s been in our family for 21 years and counting. Sparky really only has two things in life he doesn

After enjoying a break of a few short months from the dentist we officially kicked off our 2016 dental days. Last year we started doing things a little differently. Instead of doing everyone in a few marathon days that left everyone tired, sore, cranky and dreading having a teeth floating day we decided to see the dentist more often and do only a few horses each time. We also had to develop a new routine as our dentist that we have worked with the last several years retired a

The last couple of weeks have involved an almost non-stop stream of farriers, dentists and vets spending large chunks of time at the farm. It has felt like every day was a long marathon as we started very early (think 5am start time) and finished very late. Today was “only” a 12 hour day and it felt like we only worked a half day or something. However the good news about working an insane number of hours is you get a lot done. Yesterday we had our last visit with the equine d

I have learned to be surprised by nothing when we are floating teeth, especially if it is the first time we have had any horse’s teeth floated. It is kind of along the same lines that I have learned to be surprised at nothing when I look down at the hooves when a horse arrives. I’ve seen horses whose heels didn’t touch the ground (with shoes on, intentionally shod this way), a horse that had two shoes and three pads per hoof (not a gaited horse). Between teeth and hooves we’

The best word to describe the last few days is busy. We had a farrier day which is always a busy day, and today we had a dental day. Sheaths always get cleaned on dental visits so it definitely makes for an all around extra special day. The only days I dislike more than vaccination day are dental days. Nothing puts the horses in a less cooperative mood than having to spend a large amount of time in the barn. This interferes greatly with their regularly scheduled programming

I am so happy that today was the last round of teeth floating and sheath cleaning. We’ve had the dentist out four times over the last three weeks. She is a really nice person and we all enjoy having her out but I’m also glad to have that crossed off of my to-do list for awhile. I think what I like best about her as a dentist is she does not work in absolutes. She does not do just hand floating or just power floating, but instead uses whatever tools she feels will work bes

Today was another dentist day however it ended up not taking nearly as long as our dental day last week. The dentist couldn’t stay as long today so she will back again tomorrow. Hopefully one more day next week will wrap up the teeth floating for awhile. The horses were all really good for their floats today which always makes for a nice day. The boys are clean from the inside out as they also had their sheaths cleaned. I mentioned in my last post about a lot of the hoof