This is an update to enrollment as of April 2022.
Melissa and I have enjoyed giving hands on training to students willing to enroll, study the material and travel to Florida. However many people have either not been willing to travel due to COVID or have been unwilling to enroll due to legal considerations of performing dentistry on horses in their state without being a veterinarian. And to be blunt, my veterinary colleagues have not taken to this horsemanship approach even though most horse owners do not want their horses medicated or restrained in any way.
Melissa and I put every bit of mental energy into teaching Horsemanship Dentistry to students and are exhausted after 5 days. For those who have come for training, the attrition rate in subsequent years is high. We are shocked at this because our passion for helping horses with their dental needs drives us daily and we cannot understand why, after the investment, so many graduates leave. Melissa has almost 20,000 floats and I have over 75,000 floats recorded. But we warn students that this is hard work and some discover what “hard work” really means.
I am keeping the online course work available to everyone in the world through this site. The information is the accumulation of almost 4 decades of floating teeth in horses while all I had when I started was about 1 hour of training from my mentor, zero schools and only 1 current book at the time written by a lay dentist.
However, it is my goal in 2022 to update this material to add more visuals so that ANYONE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD can learn this and then practice it on their own. In addition, students that complete this coursework successfully will be enrolled in my other web site called TheHorsesAdvocate.com where they can join a private group within the membership just for graduates. Here we can ask questions and even set up live online meetings.
I often spend more time talking people out of enrolling because even with their knowledge that they intend to practice horse dentistry in a state where they are not allowed to work, most people eventually either quit or are forced out by pressure from veterinarians in their area. This latter thought is disgusting to me as they allow most other aspects of veterinary care to go on with unlicensed individuals yet these vets continue to promote their dentistry techniques and unproven theories. They could hire these unlicensed Horsemanship Dentists and add to their practice but they don’t.
NOTE: If you are a veterinarian interested in adding this to your practice (either yourself or a non-veterinarian / tech employee) please contact me for more information.
The bottom line is that Horsemanship Dentistry is based on decades and tens of thousands of horses and should be allowed to be taught to anyone in the world. There are ZERO randomized, controlled studies regarding the techniques or theories of equine dentistry. As of the 2021 AAEP meeting there are only “how to” sessions. There is no money for dentistry research in horses. All we have is observational studies yet the loudest voices in the profession are afraid to ask for dissenting views. Cognitive dissonance is scary.
More importantly, many areas of the world do not have access to medications or expensive equipment and in these areas equids are still used in everyday life. This also includes the United States especially now that the AAEP has acknowledged a shrinking equine veterinarian population. At last visit, 1.4% of all graduating veterinarians go into an equine practice and 50% of these leave horse practice within 5 years. The attrition rate of older horse vets exceeds the repopulation rate. Soon, horse owners in rural areas everywhere will not have access to an equine veterinarian. I predicted this 5 years ago in my article in The International Equine Veterinarian titled, “Houston, We Have A Problem.”
THE BOTTOM LINE
1) If you are unsure and want to try out the 1st Module of this school, become a member of TheHorsesAdvocate.com where you will find the “The Essentials Of Horsemanship Dentistry.” This is the same as Module 1 of the school and gets you started in understanding what dentistry is in horses. You can also find for FREE in the topics section several hundred images of dentistry cases as well as view the “Aging Horses By Their Teeth” project I did.
2) Enroll in the online Coursework Bundle (Modules 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5).
3) If you are then ready to enroll in the hands on training (Module 6) and you are considering returning after completing 100 floats after training to become “Certified in Horsemanship Dentistry” (Module 7) then call / email me and I will send you an active link for these additional modules.
| The Coursework Bundle (includes Modules 1 through 5) | $2497 | Enroll |
| Module 6 – Hands on training | $4265 | Call |
| Module 7 – Certification in Horsemanship Dentistry (1 to 3 days in FL) | $735 | Call |
Thank you for reading through this. When the new coursework is updated you will have automatic access to it. Enrolling before this update will still be very beneficial and all of the material will remain. I will only be adding to it so get started now if you want.
Geoff Tucker, DVM aka “Doc T”