My own horse Charlie is a real accident prone fellow. For seventeen years, he has been my faithful companion, not a spiteful bone in his sixteen-hand body but he has had hoof issues, stifle issues, bent gates for fear of the bugs, over-reached and cut his heel bulb, kicked at an annoying horse and caught his leg over a stall door, spent one hour last winter eating ice covered grass and then lay on his side with colic. Most of those special injuries occurred at boarding facilities. But this year, at our place, Charlie got a mystery hole in the back of the left side of his mouth. He also had an infection between two teeth on the right side and went from eating almost a bale of hay a day to eating no hay and quidding balls of hay around his stall.

Don’t worry this is a happy ending story. So in an amazing East meets West tale of survival, I called Dr. Mary Delorey, a veterinarian specializing in equine dentistry. Another horse vet had said nothing was wrong with his teeth or mouth, so you have to use your own common sense sometimes. Here is what Mary did:
She cleaned out the infection and packed it with acrylic, changed his occlusion angle, flushed out the mystery hole and wanted Charlie on antibiotics. I worried that because he is 20 years old, the antibiotics would not be good for his GI tract.

Instead of antibiotics, this is what I did:
Homeopathics: Hypericum 30C (for mouth pain) Arnica 30C (for tissue healing) and Mercuris 30C for the ulcer Homeopathics rotated just for the first five days.
Herbal: Nettles, hawthorne, echinacea root, goldenseal for just a few days, the other herbs for 2 weeks.
Then Charlie let me flush his mouth with a yarrow/comfrey tea and a long syringe. He didn’t like it but he got a piece of apple afterwards
Food: I fed him soaked pellets and mash with vitamins until he ate hay again

When Dr. Mary examined him a few months later, she was impressed at how well everything healed.

After 10 days he was 100% better eating normally.