Cowboy horse "dentists"

Re: Cowboy horse "dentists"

ms1083 — Fri, 07 May 2010 07:59:28 GMT

[quote user="Evelyn Barbour-Hill"]I hpe you are just using that as vernacular shorthand for "EDTs who have passed the BEVA/BVDA exam and are members of BAEDT"[/quote]

Yes of course that is what I mean. The fact that many horse owners use the term "dentist" equally annoyes me no end as these people have not got a degree and therefore can not in any way be compared to human dental surgeons.

Re: Cowboy horse "dentists"

Evelyn Barbour-Hill — Fri, 07 May 2010 01:31:26 GMT

[quote user="Matthew Scotter"]registered EDTs[/quote]

I hpe you are just using that as vernacular shorthand for "EDTs who have passed the BEVA/BVDA exam and are members of BAEDT" There is no Register as such.

And, er, it is legal for a qualified EDT to extract an uncomplicated wolf tooth, although this effectively mandates the presence of a veterinary surgeon since animal welfare legislation (although not actually tested in this particular context yet) would require adequate sedation and analgesia.

Minor points, though. We are all preaching to the converted here I think....... are we going to get any dissenting views?

Up here in my area I've got one very good qualified EDT who I'd be happy to collaborate with any time. There's also one unqualified chap who took the exam once and failed and has never bothered to try again........ as far as I can detect, that hasn't stopped him from being busy all over the place . Yes, this makes me cross, but horse people are so secretive and have no qualms in employing professionals, paraprofessionals, quasi-professionals, self-appointed unqualified experts, dubious charlatans and anyone else who talks a good talk to do things to their horses, without telling any of them what the others have been doing. You can't complain without solid evidence, and how is that going to be forthcoming? Even if there's a disaster, the owner may realise that their insurance will not pay out for the consequences of illegal treatment, so they keep quiet.

Hmm, starting to rant a bit here. However.

It really makes me cross that after all the work and the years that people have put in to making the qualified EDT respectable with a visible training, exam, and professional association structure, and getting BAEDT united in outlook with BEVA and BVDA, and getting RCVS to consider the matter thoroughly, and achieving legal status for the qualified EDT (or as near legal as can possibly be achieved until DEFRA get an Exemption Order out, something we've been blattering at them for for, what, a dozen years?) so many veterinary surgeons are so ignorant about the position, or else are not so ignorant but choose to ignore the law.

One can excuse the horse owner's lack of understanding, but what hope is there of gently educating them when veterinary surgeons remain in the dark?

I'd excuse the cattle and sheep vets, but not so much the small animal people because there are analogous threats to their own part of the profession. I'd also excuse the newish graduate, if they graduated from one particular UK veterinary school.

Some common misconceptions..............

"Equine dentists" How many times does it have to be said, there is no such thing as an equine dentist or horse dentist. If there were, it would be a veterinary surgeon such as Paddy Dixon or Chris Pearce or one or two from the US, but such vets do not want and do not take the title: they are happy to be veterinary surgeons.

"Horse dentists are analogous to human dentists". No they aren't.

"They can do major work, extractions, diastema burring, pulp capping and so on, because they are equipped and they know how" No they can't, although they might think they know how.

"'They can do major work, extractions, etc as long as a veterinary surgeon is present". Even a Council candidate, REA inspector, PSS inspector, was recently labouring under that nonsense.

"They should be left to get on with it, because they have an understanding of the science of occlusion in the horse which is not taught in the vet schools and is Greek to me". Well, if they've gone to the US to train and they haven't tempered their training with more in the UK in order to pass the exam, then they may well be full of half-baked pseudo-scientific theories which are quite wrong and just cause suffering to horses. And dentistry might not be taught in all the vet schools, but there's the BEVA Trust New Graduates course every year, and for the more mature vet there are excellent courses and lectures and books.

I had better stop now.

Re: Cowboy horse "dentists"

alan hough — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:42:15 GMT

Hi Matthew

I agree generally that once you explain the sitauation regarding qualified and unqualified EDTs to most owners they are more than happy to then only use the Vet/Qualified EDT in future. It is for this reason I would love to see a national publicity campaign possibly, jointly run by some if not all of the following organisations; DEFRA, RCVS, BVA, BEVA, BAEDT, to make more horse owners aware of the legalities and welfare and insurance implications of using unqualified and, in the majority of cases, uninsured indivdiuals not just for teeth but also for "back"/chiro/physio treatments. ( dont get me started on that issue)

Most unqualified individuals I have found use the horse owners lack of knowledge regarding the regulations to their advantage and convience the owner that they are doing nothing wrong in pulling out wolf teeth etc. Whats worse is the instances where a vet is presnt and sedates the horse for the unqualified personand thereby allows these individuals to use the phrase " it will be covered by the vets insurance"-which it clearly wont be.

If there are vets who don't/can't do the necessary dental work for their clients then please refer the client to a vet who can rather than somehow legitimise the illegal practice of these individuals by working with/sedating horses for them. I fully understand and appreciate that there are vets who dont enjoy or like doing equine dentistry but as that animals vet surely you have a duty to ensure that any dental work is done properly and safely and by properly qualified and insured individuals only.

Sorry -thats my rant over

Alan

Re: Cowboy horse "dentists"

ms1083 — Wed, 05 May 2010 19:52:10 GMT

Alan

I completely agree with you. I hate to think of untrained and un assessed lay people peforming procedures on animals. Personally I have no problem working along side registered EDTs but will have nothing to do with non-registered "Equine dentists".

If an owner phones to book a visit to sedate horse for EDT, I explain that we will only sedate for registered EDTs (according to the VDS cover) and will be present during the procedure. 9 time out of 10 they have do idea about qualified or cowboy EDT's and seem shocked that we can carry out the same procedure for, often, a fraction of the cost. In addition, once properly explained they are also amazed that the "equine dentist" they have used for years is not qualified.

One client asked her non qualified "dentist" if he was registered and his response was "well its just another cost"!! ..... It could be argued that so too is the RCVS membership fee but without it we would be illiagle.

As I too have an interest in equine dentistry our practice has an offer. £40 for visit plus routine dental work. or £30 per horse if already on site for another reason, vaccination for example. I find this undercuts almost all EDTs, gives us an opputinity to explain the regulations, gain future clients and most importantly show horse owners that vets (if interested) as fully competant at equine dental work. I also believe it crucial to ensure I am seen to carry out a full clinical examination at the same time, especially if sedation is required.

Another interesting issue is that I have done routeine dentals on horses that have previously been treated by lay people every 6 months and found no work being required at all, like it had been done yesterday - are they visiting too often (using official reminders in the post) in order to make more money or rasping too much away?

Another point, no EDT whether registered or not is allowed to extract any teeth (including "wolf" teeth). As it is illiagle, their insurance company will not cover them so they are not insured whatever they may think. I hate the thought of teeth being pulled out without any local anaesthetic or analgesia, this is also a welfare issue. If a vet is present during this, say for sedation, then he/she is responsible for whatever mess/complications that result.

Sorry about the rambeling.

Matthew