Editor's note: Originally published in the spring 2015 issue of This Land under the headline Horse Teeth And Heartbreak, author Sheilah Bright's portrait of equine dentist Edye Lucas is a full one, rendering her personal story in vivid color, with a late-in-the-story reveal that's unexpected and uniquely Oklahoman.
Elbow deep inside the jaws of a stallion, Edye Lucas closes her eyes as her fingers explore a landscape of slivered canyons and barbed peaks in the moist hollow of a horse’s mouth.
It’s cold enough in the barn to freeze saliva on the stainless-steel speculum wedged between the animal’s upper and lower jaws, where up to 44 teeth could easily shred a wrist or crush fingers. Her right arm feels warm and safe as it glides along the 15-inch tongue pulsating like a pale eel.
“It’s kinda like getting a sloppy massage,” says Edye, owner of Oklahoma Equine Dentistry, based near Purcell, Oklahoma. “It rolls underneath you as you work, which is nice until you get a hold of something raunchy.”
Cheek teeth, wave mouth, shear mouth, milk teeth, hooks, parrot mouth, sow mouth, wolf teeth—this molar meadow of decay and daily grind keeps Edye and her assistant, Carmen Walker Hottel, driving thousands of miles across the Midwest.
In early January, they hobbled home on a bent tire rim, a bad fuel injector, and three quarts of oil after working on horses in five states within three days. Later that month on a Texas work trip, they picked up a couple of hitchhikers—two abandoned puppies that they hid in motel bathrooms. They named the puppies Thelma and Louise, nicknames that people often pin on them as they spin tales of their equine adventures. Before they headed back to Oklahoma, they found the pups a safe home with help from their active social media followers.