Louise Blampied, the Bungendore horse dentist. Photo: James Coleman.
Louise Blampied is the proud owner of Ned the horse (and yes, he’s named after the bushranger), but she also spends her working life around hundreds of other horses. In very close quarters.
“I always rode every chance I could, and I’ve always had a horse-related job from 15 onwards,” she says.
Louise is a qualified equine dentist, servicing the mouths of horses across Canberra, the South Coast and the Southern Tablelands. Regular runs stretch to the Snowy Mountains, the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury. Turns out it’s an in-demand job.
It all started in Adaminaby, near the Snowy Mountains. Coming from her hometown of Perth, it was here she discovered there was no one to look after the family’s horses, “so I just started looking into it”.
She completed a Certificate IV in equine dentistry in Tamworth, followed by an 18-month training program through the Equine Dental Association Australia, working three to five days a week with different dentists all over Australia for no pay. She resorted to sleeping in her car and then – slightly more lavishly – a horse float to afford it.
“It was a bit of a tough year – travelling around and not getting paid.”
Louise was then told of “a lot of work around Canberra” by a retiring dentist, and so in August last year, she set up shop on a property near Bungendore.
She now tends to between 35 and 60 horses a week – including two stables worth of racehorses from Thoroughbred Park in Canberra.
“It’s a bit of a dream, to be honest,” she says.
Well, except maybe for that time during her training when she had just finished filing the teeth of a horse down and the trainer joked “be careful with that horse – he just won the Cox Plate”.
Contact Louise Jayne Equine Dental on 0499 031 004 if your horse needs a check-up.
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