Equine dental disease causes significant pain and performance problems in horses, yet routine dental care remains inadequate for many horses — a preventable source of chronic suffering.
Equine dental welfare is chronically neglected because horses adapt to dental pain in ways that make it invisible to owners. A horse that drops feed, resists the bit, or loses weight may be expressing dental pain that years of stoicism have normalized in the horse-owner relationship. Regular dental examination and treatment prevents the progressive deterioration of dental abnormalities that cause increasing pain over time. Riding and working horses with undiagnosed dental pain experience discomfort with every contact of the bit on dental sharp points — a form of ongoing welfare compromise in otherwise well-cared-for horses.