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[RC] Equine dentistry in difficult conditions - Maryanne GabbaniThanks for all the input. I'm getting the feeling that I had when I was researching this equipment online last night. Just looking at the stuff, I can't see how it would work here. While most stables here do have electricity, we have 220 volts, so I'd probably have to look for something from Europe, which is already putting things into a much higher cost bracket. The equipment is bulky and I can't see Omar trucking it around on his bicycle. Yes, folks, I have farrier who works with a bike. He's been trained by visiting American and European farriers (free room/board/riding here for any willing to come and put in some training time with our farriers) and has built a lot of his equipment, including a portable forge, locally. When he needs the forge, one of his sons comes along with HIS bike to carry it and we provide the propane bottle to fuel it.Most of this equipment seems to be set up for a clinic or barn situation, and it sounds like most people using it are tranquilising the horses. With my herd at least, Omar never gives the horses anything. He has a speculum, which the horses aren't thrilled with, but they are just held by a groom on a rope and they get their teeth checked. He only rasps off the nasty points and while I have him come every 6 months to check everyone, he might only actually work on 4 out of the 16...like yesterday. And oddly enough it wasn't the older horses necessarily who needed him. My 3.5 yr old gelding was in real need. Someone else had been responsible for his maintenance until recently and didn't believe in checking teeth. My three oldest were just fine. Anyway, I know that Omar doesn't want to get into drugging horses. That is definitely vet work and can be risky. I think he and I are going to discuss this and my suspicion is that he will stick with manual tools. Recommendations on good quality rasps would probably be very helpful at this point. Doing equine maintenance in Egypt is interesting. Our so-called vet schools don't let the students ever practice on anything live so their learning is mostly theoretical, largely out of date, and they have to learn on the job. Since we all know that the young vets have no experience, most people use the older vets who have a vested interest in not helping the young ones get experience. It's a no win situation, frankly, and so I've personally done a hell of a lot of reading and research on issues when I need a vet. I know a couple of good young ones and I prefer to use them for day to day issues like gelding or wounds but I supervise personally. None of these guys has a "clinic". When we do surgeries such as gelding or stitching up a wound or something, it's on the front lawn. There are a few breeders who do have surgery facilities that I have used in the past, and they are fairly basic. At 21, my favorite mare needed surgery on a check ligament, so I waited until the American vet who is an expert in these things was in Cairo and I ponied her the 10 miles over to the stud farm where she had her surgery. Dory doesn't do trucks or trailers and since almost no one here has one of their own that I could use to get her over her phobia, walking her there and back with her son was the most sensible option in both Jack's mind and my own. The fact that it included about 3 miles of busy city streets made life interesting. Happily part of my horses' training includes walking down crowded narrow village streets with dump trucks, pickups, and minibuses so the horses were fine and the part of the city that we had to cross was the area in front of the pyramids where every other building has a box or two for the poor horses that they sell rides on to tourists. The traffic was used to horses as well, though a woman riding one and ponying another was sort of odd...sort of?! Five years ago, her four month old son had subluxated patellas and needed surgery at the same stud so we took him over in a trailer but once he'd finished the surgery and was recovering, there really was nothing that was going to be done at the stud farm in the way of nursing that we couldn't do at home, so while he was still groggy, we popped him into the back of a jeep wrangler on a foam pad with two grooms to hold him and drove him home. We figured that it would be less stressful to be with his mom at that point. You do what works here. I wouldn't try that with most foals that I know but Figgy has always been the exception to the rule and he still is. Thanks again for the help. -- Maryanne Stroud Gabbani msgabbani@xxxxxxxxx Egypt Face to Face www.alsorat.com Weblogs: Living In Egypt miloflamingo.blogspot.com Cairo/Giza Daily Photo cairogizadailyphoto.blogspot.com Turn Right At The Sarcophagus haramlik.blogspot.com Photos of Egypt: http://www.flickr.com/photos/livinginegypt/
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