Do You Have Your Government License to Live?

            “OK, Shirley, I know that the title is an exaggeration, but just barely.”

            This whole thing has surfaced because of ‘equine teeth floating’.  Until April 27^th of this year, yes I’ll admit it, I was totally ignorant of the fact that a horse’s teeth continue to grow throughout its life time. This has the same result as its hoof’s growing; sort of like our fingernails, they must be trimmed.

            Not that the horses’ teeth are trimmed, they are ‘floated’, a term describing the process of their being filed down by some technique foreign to my knowledge. Well, up till about the year of our Lord 2000 ‘teeth floating’ was performed by ‘Teeth Floaters’, a group of stalwart and independent folks that made a living filing down horses’ teeth. About that year the Arkansas Veterinary Medical Examining Board decided that this should only be performed by licensed professionals, i.e. members of their own brotherhood. From that date forward to ‘float teeth’ you had to have a ‘Vets License’ or they hounded you with fines and threatened jail time. I’m certain that the need for more revenue from licensing fees had nothing to do with this; nor would the desire to drive more business toward their own membership of licensed vets.

            Now don’t go and get all 'het up' and compare this to your own dentistry experience. It turns out that other, much more intrusive, to my way of thinking, procedures are preformed on livestock by ‘non-vet/non-licensed’ folks. Some examples are: horse shoeing, hoof grinding, dehorning, branding, tail docking, and castration. All of these can be done without government approval, but not ‘teeth floating’. Well the Arkansas Legislature has decided that ‘teeth floating’ may not require a vet license after all, perhaps influenced by the fact it had been done for hundreds of years without requiring a license from the State Vets Bureau. But so as to not be too hasty, the Legislature passed a law allowing ‘non-vets’ to again ‘float teeth’ but only for the next two years while a special committee studies this most serious of societal issues. Meanwhile, if you happen to be a male horse, watch out for that stranger sneaking up behind you, he doesn’t need a ‘vet-license’ to remove your manhood.

            But the most amazing part of this whole issue wasn’t the expose of the practice of professional brotherhood organizations putting non-members out of business. The most remarkable piece of news in the article was that nationwide, 29% of all workers require some type of permission, licensing from the government before they can work. Barbers, beauticians, doctors, lawyers, and the list goes on, all require some type of government permission to work.

            Oh, yes, one final fact. The Arkansas Veterinary Medical Examining Board has put twice as many ‘teeth floaters’ out of business in the last 10 years than they have put incompetent vets out of business. Perhaps it’s the ‘Fox watching the Hen house’ situation. Or perhaps there was an inordinate number of equine complaints about hurtful ‘teeth floaters’.