Horse Dental Work

The dentist pressed a gauze pad into my cheek, and injected a dose of Novocaine  A few moments later, he was drilling out the old filling, and soon into the decay that could eventually cause a big problem. The main discomfort for me was the slight aroma of smoke caused by the drill grinding on the old filling and the decayed part of the tooth. All this was done in preparation for a new crown that will probably last the next 35 years of my life. Then he pressed in some goo to make a mold, and finally placed a temporary cap on the tooth.

In the middle of all this, I told him about the Berkshire Carousel, how a team of master carvers were able to explain to amateurs, exactly what had to be done to render a likeness of a horse, and the amateurs were able to produce high quality carousel horses with some instruction and oversight. It seems to me, that the master carvers are great teachers.

I thought then about John, who has been carving at the carousel for a little over a month. A short time before that, he was a security wonk at a pharmaceutical company. He volunteered at the Berkshire Carousel, and suddenly he is working on a horse's head, and more specifically, over the past two weeks, on the horse's mouth. He talks to one of the main carvers, prowls around the finished horses. He gazes into each mouth, attempting to figure out the intricacies of how the lips, the teeth and the tongues of the horses interrelated, so that he can do the dental work on the horse called Thunderbolt. He notices the number and size of the teeth, the position of the tongue. Will the horse have an overbite? How much of the teeth will show behind the lips?

Then with the sharp chisel and knife, he gently scrapes away small bits of basswood, eventually forming the basic structure of Thunderbolt's  "smile";  such patience and attention, with definite pride as John works steadily at his practice of "dentistry."

I asked my dentist if he could explain his procedure to another person so that that person could do the dentistry. He thought about that for a minute, and said "You wouldn't want that to happen." I think that was a no, and he is right.