3 minute read
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
By Linda Roberts
A client once asked Graham Alcock if he needed to quit talking and pay attention to what he was doing. At the time, he was standing in front of a horse, peering into its mouth, and filing a back molar with a longhandled instrument—all the while carrying on a lively conversation.
He recalled the incident, flashed a bright smile, and said, “it’s just the way I work, and I’ve been doing it this way so long I don’t think about it anymore.”
While horse owners often marvel at Alcock’s laidback style, his four-legged patients don’t seem to mind the procedure in the least. Rather, the horses appear to take comfort in the running litany he delivers while filing sharp points smooth, removing small, peg-like front teeth known as wolf teeth, or rounding off irregular edges on molars.
Alcock’s movements are quick and efficient, leaving his patient better equipped to process and utilize its feed and more willing to accept bit, bridle, and a rider’s directions.
Pointing to his simple tools of the trade—two stainless steel buckets filled with various sized files on long handles—Alcock, 62, added that, “I’m a dinosaur.”
With new power tools available to reduce the manpower involved in the arduous manual task of rasping back and forth on teeth, some equine dentists have shelved their old tools in favor of the contemporary. Alcock’s choice is the method by which he was taught.
“I have power tools, but I only use them on about one percent of the horses I work with. That’s in the event they need a lot of filing. You can’t just will a good job out of that bucket,” he said, referencing his preference for manually filing away in a combined test of skill and strength he’s built up over the years.
Alcock has been up close and personal with hundreds of horses for almost 30 years. However, for this talkative Englishman, his demanding profession is nothing more than the extension of a childhood that always included horses.
By age 12, the slight-framed, nimble Alcock, who grew up north of London, had already decided he would be a jockey. At 16, he left home for Newmarket, the British training and racing mecca, to sign on with a trainer as an apprentice rider.
“I got too heavy,” he said, even though he weighs the same today as years ago—140 pounds. His weight opened the door of opportunity in the U.S. to exercise steeplechase horses in Camden, SC, followed by riding in Saratoga, NY and Kentucky. Alcock’s weight presented no problem in jump racing, and “I soon found I was hooked.”
He raced at top speed over fences for eight years and some 100 races a year. Realizing as he grew older that a jockey’s thrilling, but equally dangerous, life also needed a back-up career, Alcock decided that with his lifelong knowledge of horses he could also learn the equine dental trade.
Absorbing the craft from a skilled equine dentist in Kentucky, and being familiar with Loudoun and Fauquier counties from previous visits, he tested the Piedmont for the potential of establishing his own business.
With so many race, show, event and hunting horses, breeding farms, and other equine activities, finding clients has never been an issue. “It’s a very special, small community, where everybody knows everybody.”
With a still boyish grin, he said he has no thoughts of retiring. “I have great clients,” the said, “and I love my life.”
