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By Tom Allen, DVM September 2004 |
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The bad news is that nearly all of the United
States veterinarians who currently work on horses would have to do dentistry
full time to provide dentistry for all the horses in this country-and that is
not about to happen.
So we need more qualified individuals
performing horse dentistry. As
more owners become educated about the importance, as a result of more
veterinarians being informed, the demand will continue to increase, and yet
the supply of qualified dental practitioners is not increasing
proportionately. |
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The Ugly
A few individuals possibly having influence
with legislators are encouraging states to rewrite their veterinary practice
acts, placing more restrictions upon the practice of equine dentistry.
While the demand is increasing and the supply of veterinary equine
practitioners is decreasing, these individuals are attempting to deny the
horse-owning public access to any dentistry providers except those with a
veterinary license or those certified as veterinary technicians and employed
by veterinarians.
This would eliminate the individuals who
brought back dentistry from being able to continue providing it for the owners
(and the veterinarians who refer dentistry to them) unless they can stop doing
so and attend a two or four year veterinary technician course (and very little
exposure to equine dentistry is found in such courses). |
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Solution
The IAED initiated certification testing,
having now certified over twenty veterinarians and several dozen
non-veterinary members here in the U.S., and is now attempting to gather
information relative to the strength of horse owners’ support of the
non-veterinary equine dental professionals.
The effort has been named the Smiling Horse Campaign, and is being
conducted in order to obtain evidence showing that horse owners are in favor
of retaining their right to have a choice about who can or cannot provide
services for their horses.
The solution:
if every veterinarian who administers to substantial numbers of horses
hires or refers to a non-veterinary equine dental practitioner, we will have
the bases covered! |
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©
Copyright 2005 Dr. Tom Allen, horsedentist.com - All Rights Reserved
