The term "wolf teeth" is a commonly used, but poorly understood, part of the horse owner’s vocabulary. My veterinary practice is devoted exclusively to equine dentistry. I suspect more than half of the owners who tell me or ask me about their horses’ wolf teeth have no idea what those teeth actually are or where they are located. Let’s shed some light on the subject.

The wolf teeth are thought to be vestigial (incompletely developed) premolars that have, over the millennia, shrunk in size to what they are today: small, nonfunctional teeth that can cause problems for the domestic horse. They are located in the "bars" of the mouth (the area between the incisors and the grinding cheek teeth), usually just in front of the second premolar (the first grinding cheek tooth). They can be difficult for an owner to see since they lie well behind the corners of the mouth, and most horses don’t tolerate examination of the mouth very well without sedation.

Wolf teeth are not to be confused with the much larger canine teeth located closer to the center of the bars in stallions and geldings. Mares will occasionally have canines that are smaller than those in males, but they are also located much farther forward than wolf teeth.

Veterinarians have observed that 13-32% of horses develop wolf teeth. They occur in both genders, but females might be slightly more likely to have them. Horses can have from zero to four wolf teeth. The usual configuration is two wolf teeth, one on either side of the upper jaw. But some horses have them on the lower jaw in addition to or instead of the upper