Sunday, July 10, 2005
Annals of equine dentistry: Floating Smarty Jones
Most of you are familiar with Smarty Jones, favorite horse of the greater Philadelphia area and one-time Derby winner. Smarty Jones' teeth, like the teeth of horses everywhere, grow constantly. In the state of nature that isn't a problem, because the horse is always munching away at hard-scrabble plants and other things that wear them down as fast as they can grow. In the state of domesticity, however, the growing teeth pose a problem for the horse. Horse owners hire equine dentists to file the teeth down so that they are all level (a process called "floating the teeth"), pull "caps" (the baby teeth), smooth the corners and so forth.
Surely you are wondering the relevance of all of this.
As it happens, Smart Jones' dentist graciously agreed to teach the TigerHawk daughter's ponyclub class the basics of equine oral hygiene. After the lecture he handed out some baby teeth to the girls, and told the TH D that hers had come from Smart Jones. Here it is, with a quarter next to it to establish relative size.Smarty Jones, of course, is a gelding, so his particular genes are lost. One is almost forced to wonder whether the magic of PCR might rescue them someday. Perhaps the TigerHawk daughter is sitting on a gold mine.
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