I got a call the other day from a lawyer wanting to interview the author of Out of Control, the story of the murder of Dr. David Harris by his dentist wife Clara. The Colombian born one time beauty contest winner was convicted by a Texas jury and sentenced to 20 years in the slammer. She is suing her lawyer, famed Houston criminal defense attorney George Parnham.

Informed appellate sources close to the case say it has merit - perhaps has merit in spades.

The lawsuit, filed by Houston attorney Dean Blumrosen, alleges Parnham violated an original fee agreement of $75,000 by charging Harris $235.000; never provided invoices; told Harris to sign a security agreement only protecting his interests; and filed a lien on her properties the day before she was to be sentenced.

Moreover, the suit claims Parnham charged her more than $10,000 for another law firm to draw up papers that only benefited him.

But the most damning allegation in the lawsuit is the claim that "Mr Parnham was unaware that the legal defense of accident had been abolished in 1973, up until the State of Texas rested Plaintiff's criminal case."

Tilt.

Yep, you got it. Parnham claimed at trial that the murder of Clara Harris husband David was in fact an accident.

Last year the bearded lawyer and an appellate team got the conviction of another notorious client tossed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Andrea Yates conviction was overturned, the result of a spectacular feat of lawyering and a whopper told on the stand by a respected witness. Convicted of killing her five children, Yates will likely spend the rest of her life in a psychiatric hospital instead of in the slammer, convicted of capital murder. In fact, if she takes her medicine and responds favorably to treatment, Andrea someday could walk free.

And what of the whopper that opened the doors to the jail for her? Famed forensic psychiatrist, sometimes derisively called "Hollywood" Park Dietz for his courtship of the media, did his part to shorten Andrea Yates' stay in prison when he either became so full of himself that he exaggerated his testimony in her trial - or outright lied to help the prosecution. Dietz claimed in sworn testimony that he had consulted on a segment of "Law and Order " in which a woman killed her children and then got off with an insanity defense. No such episode ever aired.

I had been tipped that Dietz had allegedly told a big one by my friend Suzanne O'Malley, author of Are You There Alone?. I was covering the trial for the New York Post, dictating the facts of the day's event to the re-write desk. O'Malley told me I would be getting a call from the show's executive producer to confirm what she had told me.

I dutifully informed the tabloid, and was completely ignored in their frenzy facing looming deadlines. It was an unusual lapse. Ordinarily the newspaper would have jumped to beat their arch rival, the New York Daily News. I quickly filed the lost scoop away in the spilt milk column and went home to dinner. At about seven o'clock the phone rang, and as promised, Dick Wolf, producer of "Law and Order" was telling me the most famous psychiatrist in America had lied on the stand (Wolf has just picked up yet another Emmy for his ("Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee").

I frantically dialed the Post again. Getting anyone on the line was futile I was told. It was a lost opportunity, and the newspaper had blown it big time.

During later testimony I told Dietz about the call. His response was to ask if we would report it on Page 6, the Post's hugely read gossip slot.

O'Malley was incredulous when I told her what had happened the following day at court. She skillfully leaked the information to another source and the rest is history. Suzanne wrote about my experience in Are You There Alone. I wasn't embarrassed about losing the scoop. I had tried to get it in the paper.

She also told Parnham. He attempted to get the judge to reconsider Dietz' testimony. The judge, full of herself, rock hard and pompous, was a former prosecutor hell bent on helping her former colleagues from the DA's office convict Yates. She would hear nothing of the sort from the likes of an uppity defense attorney. Judge Belinda Hill was cut from the mold of Harris County prosecutors who gave Texas a dubious lead in the number death sentences and executions nationwide. The office is characterized with concern for conviction rates often leaving justice trampled on the courthouse color.

Parnham faced much the same kind of judge when he defended Clara Harris. Although the wealthy dentist was clearly guilty, she drew a bad card when her trial fell into the venue of Judge Carol Davies, another former prosecutor. The judge was limited in her elocution skills. When she spoke, one syllable words were converted to three in her strong East Texas twang. Moreover, while Hill was decidedly pro-prosecution in her rulings, Davies manifested physical revulsion toward the defendant, frequently showing it with her body language as I described in Out of Control.

In both trials, the deck was stacked against the defense attorney by the court itself.

And on top of all that, during the Clara Harris trial, George Parnham got sick. When he collapsed in the courtroom, the cynic in me jumped to the fore. I had seen a defense lawyer cause a minor diversion in a trial before when famed Austin attorney Roy Minton became seriously ill during the seven month trial of the Autumn Hills Nursing Home chain and it's executives (still the longest trial in Texas history). It was the subject of my first book, Death Without Dignity. My instincts then also told me that the rotund Mr. Minton was not ill but was using a lawyer's trick to secure sympathy from the jury. In both cases, I was wrong in my suspicions. Yet in both cases, the lawyers were capable of such a ruse if they believed something like that would work to their client's advantage.

Parnham's collapse happened on a Friday, largely due to fatigue and a cold. He was back the following Monday. Minton's was much more serious. When he returned to court a month later he had shed more than 50 pounds putting him in fine shape to finish the trial and help secure a hung jury as one of six top Texas lawyers defending the chain and it's brass.

The inescapable fact in the Clara Harris trial is that George Parnham presented a flawed case, a lackluster and often bumbling performance as a trial lawyer, and one of the most astonishing defenses in the history of criminal jurisprudence. Equally inescapable was the virtually indisputable fact that his client, in a fit of temper, had killed her philandering husband who she had caught red handed with his girlfriend in a Texas Hilton hotel. What's more, the killing had been caught on video by a detective hired by Clara Harris herself

At trial, Parnham claimed that his client had struck David Harris once by accident, and then accidentally ran over him again and again. As it turned out, the jury believed she drove her S Class Mercedes, with only six inches of clearance from the ground, in a circle meat grinding her husband as many as five times as testified by eyewitnesses.

I thought the accident defense was silly the first time George told me about it over dinner and drinks in an upscale Houston restaurant. To make such a claim was at best, ridiculous, at worst incompetent. I lean toward the latter and wrote as much in Out of Control.

I watched Parnham work in both the Yates trial and the Harris case. His performance before the jury in both cases was lackluster. However, he did one thing right. In the courtroom he evoked sympathy from the press, if not the jurors. My heart wrenched when I sat on a hard oak bench and watched the clearly mentally ill Andrea Yates hear her life sentence. My gut churned as Clara Harris folded in Parnham's arms in near collapse as the once successful dentist and mom learned she could spend almost two decades in prison.

I like George Parnham. I just wouldn't want him for my lawyer if I was in a jam.

Yet in the sense that he was able to evoke compassion in not only me, but in virtually the entire press gallery of about 50 cynical journalists says something about him - in fact it says a lot. Both Yates and Harris should have been treated more mercifully by their jurors, the observers who count. They were not. In both cases, they doled out a harsh punishment in which both women would spend scores of years in jail, suburban professionals and moms turned into faceless creatures on the anthill that is a modern American prison.

Clara Harris' lawsuit against the lawyer who stood by her throughout her original incarceration and subsequent trial comes as no surprise. I learned from close friends of hers that from the moment she was found guilty by that Harris County jury, Clara Harris was pissed at her lawyer. And if the allegations in the suit are even close to the truth, George Parnham has a lot to answer for.

Lawyers talk a lot about fiduciary responsibility. They should. Their relationship with the clients who pay them is every bit as sacred as that of the priest hearing a confessional, the military officer leading men into battle, and the physician who must use his expertise to make a patient well, or at least better. At the very least, the defense of Clara Harris by George Parnham was stumbling, bumbling, silly, and ultimately inept. And although I liked the defendant when she ultimately took the stand, the jury didn't and that was all that counted.

After all, claiming a killing such as the murder of David Harris is an accident is as far fetched as a claim that the wounds to the back of Abraham Lincoln's head came from a cat scratch.

He used a defense outlawed by the state in 1973? Whew!

GOP presidential wannabe Mitt Romney is a daring man. He is running for the Oval Office with full knowledge that his beliefs and the beliefs of millions like him will be put under the glare of media scrutiny. That is a place where many of his Mormon faith find distinct discomfort. I know, because I plunged headlong into that world writing about a tragic event in Utah, the heartland of the LDS Church.

Romney won the Iowa GOP straw poll. That fact alone has increased the media scrutiny on a candidate uncomfortable with it. He has already flared on a conservative radio talk show in the state when asked about his Mormon religion. That is only the beginning, and as the media asks more and more probing questions about his faith, I predict he will flame out as a candidate for the Oval office.

Why? Because I have personal experience with the very thin skins of many who are practicing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. When Mormon beliefs and practice are illuminated by the media spotlight, many in the church cringe. Others strike out, as I found out when I found my book on a Utah murder case the brunt of a relentless attack of bad reviews on Amazon.

Every Woman's Nightmare, (St. Martin's Press) is the story of the tragic and disgusting murder of Lori Hacking by her husband Mark, after discovering he had been lying to her about his acceptance into the medical school of the University of North Carolina. She was shot in the head as she slept, her body thrown in a dumpster and later buried with garbage in the Salt Lake City dump. The search for her remains gripped the nation.

Woven into the book is the story of a deeply religious Mormon family. During my research, and after the book's publication, I learned that some members of the faith regard its inner workings and rituals as secret, only available to the initiated. Yet I had a story to tell, and revealing those secrets was a part of giving my reader the full picture of the world in with Lori and Mark Hacking grew to adulthood and embraced.

As a journalist, I have always believed that few secrets are off limits to members of my profession, none the least of which those of a church which goes out of its ways to hide its core beliefs from outsiders.

Had I not written about the Mormon Church, Every Woman's Nightmare, would have been just another boring scribble about domestic violence. I don't waste my time, or my readers either, by writing about such droll soap opera upheavals in a marriage gone bad.

Lori and her brother Paul were adopted children of Portuguese descent. Their parents ultimately divorced and the children were split between their father and mother. Lori was raised in Orem, about 45 miles from Salt Lake's Temple Square, the two were regular attendees at the Ward House at the end of their street. Mark was an enthusiastic elder, an active participant in a church which dominated the couple's lives, as does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the lives of the majority of residents of the Beehive State.

So when I traveled to Salt Lake City, I naively expected to find members of a church community willing to talk about the tragedy that had happened in their midst. I wanted, and expected, full cooperation from the Mormon Church when I went to Temple Square, walked into a visitor's center situated at the epicenter of Mormonism, and asked for directions to the sect's public information office. In a lifetime of journalism, I have never encountered anything but openness and cooperation from church administrators and clerics.

A very nice elderly man quickly got on the phone and connected me with the church flacks. I informed them of my mission, to write a book for a major New York publisher on the tragic death and heroic hunt for the body of Lori Hacking.

First, there was silence as cold as Brigham Young's tombstone for a time, and then came the inevitable "We'll get back to you" moment. I instantly knew it was circle the wagons time as the Mormons closed ranks around their own. Later that evening, I got a call from the big guy, an uptight fellow named Dale Bills, the official spokesman for the fastest growing religion in America, if not the world. I was informed that "We will not be taking part in this."

I was polite, yet I don't take doors slammed in my face gracefully by an ice cold flack or anybody else. No good journalist does. Yet the church had shunned me and I had been shunned by none other than the chief Mormon flack at that. I suppose deep down I felt flattered. They were taking my presence seriously.

Shunned though I was, I had done the ethical thing. I had offered the church the opportunity to refute everything I would eventually present about it in my yet to be published book and they had rebuffed the opportunity.

I had halfway expected this sort of treatment. I didn't know much Mormon history at the time, but I darned sure knew that its Prophet, Joseph Smith, had been brutally murdered by an angry mob after he had been outrageous one too many times on June 27, 1844. The loss of Smith was just the beginning of horrendous self inflicted bad luck that would visit the Mormons and their leadership. It was of little wonder to me that they wouldn't want a "gentile" like myself poking around their innermost secrets, and reporting beliefs that most believers would consider alien, if not downright goofy. Who could blame them for closing ranks around their own? I certainly didn't.

Yet to the average Mormon, beliefs cherished since childhood were anything but goofy, alien, or strange. However, deep down, most know that the Mormon Church is out of the American mainstream of denominations. And while it sends legions of missionaries worldwide to make converts, the church is not open to outsiders in many ways.

Rather than embracing their history, the writings of their forbearers, and fundamental beliefs, when public scrutiny by outsiders happens, the Mormons often run from it, hide it, and when confronted directly about it, speak in vague generalities. Theirs is a colorful and truly heroic past, but all too often only a sanitized story is told by church spin doctors.

The Lori Hacking case was a media circus that brought the glare of publicity to Salt Lake City, and at the center of it was her mother. Like the tender hearted across America, my heart gushed rivers for Thelma Soares. But it was around her that the wagons circled their tightest. It was a circle that would not be unbroken, and I tried to breach the tight Mormon web around her and eventually made contact with her spokesman through her bishop who was momentarily accommodating. Eventually, I was told she would talk to me, however, Thelma and her handlers had determined she deserved a return for the investment of time it would take to sit down with and author to discuss her relationship with her daughter Lori.

"You are doing this book for money, aren't you?" her spokesman said matter of fact, his voice a monotone. "She will talk to you, but she needs something in return."

I have never paid for an interview in my life, and never will. I briefly put up a fight saying that doing so would be a violation of journalistic ethics. In the end though I knew I would have to get firsthand information as best I could. Fortunately, Lori's brother Paul was more than willing to help out on my project and we became good friends.

Thelma Soares wanted to profit from her adopted daughter's death. I would later learn that the gentle grieving mother portrayed on television would write a scathing review on Amazon of my book for which she was receiving nothing. When it came out, I had to wonder if the review would have been positive had I played ball with her handlers and offered to pay Thelma.

Without cooperation from Thelma, I determined to hit the books, cram as much Mormon history as I could into my mind, and spend shoe leather on the pavement retracing the steps of Mark Hacking the night he killed his wife. And like any investigative journalist, I determined to talk to as many insiders as possible.

Learning of the inner workings and practice of the religion was easy. My wife is of pioneer Mormon stock - some of whom have lapsed. And one of the lapsed ones is a cleric, an Episcopal priest, in fact. It was through him and his first person accounts that I learned of how everyday Mormons practice their religions. It was also through him that I got a insider's look at the lives of the Mormon faithful. It was also through him that I learned the intimate details of the wedding ceremony that causes so many faithful young Mormons to become disillusioned enough to leave the church.

I like to say I write books about lawyers, not about murders. After all, a murder is a pretty boring event. Taken to its lowest common denominator, living flesh is turned into dead flesh in an instant. What makes a case interesting is the skill of the lawyer before a jury as they practice their ancient craft. And sometimes the skill is never seen as lawyers work behind the scenes for their clients.

Over a career that is becoming increasingly long, I've seen many of the best. I've written books about them, and hundreds, if not thousands, of stories about their cases. Two veteran lawyers, Gilbert Athay and Bob Stott would face each other should the case ever come to trial. Both knew it never would. Yet their machinations and the charade played by both were interesting.

I couldn't have written about Athay and Stott without talking with their contemporaries. Athay, for the defense, is a longtime liberal crusader against the death penalty. Stott, is a career prosecutor, a Mormon, and already the controversial subject of a book, The Mormon Murders, in which it is alleged he protected the interests of the church over justice in a particularly bizarre case.

And then there is Utah itself. Nature looks down upon that state and smiles. While the desert of the Great Basin is a wasteland of truly biblical proportions, the grandeur of the Wasatch and High Uinta Mountains is unsurpassed. All that being said, it is without a doubt the most backward state in the union, making Alabama look almost progressive. Why? Because the wagons have been circled so long by the conservative Mormon hierarchy against gentiles and their influence many institutions harken back to the 1950s. What's more, many Utahans would have it no other way.

There are few states today in which to get a drink in a public place you have to "join" a private club, or where alcohol is sold only in state owned and run stores. Utah is at the top of that very short list. The sale and public consumption of alcohol is only one item on a long list of quirks about the state I found interesting, and delightful in a perverse sort of way. Another is its politics. The legislature is dominated by Mormon elected officials who are among the most conservative politicians anywhere. Members of the LDS Church largely vote as a block, at least in much of Utah. I recall seeing a chilling poster of a man running for Congress once on a country road in the southern part of the state. It showed a well dressed, beefy, white male. On it were written two messages, his name, and the caption, "He's one of us."

Not a week goes by without a major story in a major daily newspaper about polygamy. Tell me one other state in which that happens?

Yet all of Utah is not a throwback to a long vanished America. Salt Lake City tries. It even elected liberal Mayor Rocky Anderson to head its government, much to the consternation of the conservatives who must deal with him. And worse still, gentiles have surpassed the faithful within the city in the census. And the crowning blow - an openly gay Democrat represents the district housing Temple Square in the state senate.

So in writing Every Woman's Nightmare I had two primary elements to deal with, the domestic tragedy of a young couple's marriage, and the incredibly interesting atmosphere in which they grew up. It is an atmosphere that has evolved an "Us Against the World" attitude which has even resulted in violence against innocent people simply because they weren't Mormon. In September, 1857, a wagon train crossing Utah was attacked and more than 100 innocent pioneers were massacred at Mountain Meadows west of Cedar City. While the modern church has long denounced the killings, outsiders are still decidedly -- well, outsiders.

As I delved into Mormon history I learned that the flock has a convenient habit of forgetting the foibles of their pioneer ancestors, including Joseph Smith himself.

Mormons are an abstemious lot. They don't drink, smoke, or take coffee into their bodies. Yet the Prophet himself, Joseph Smith, ran a bar for a time until his first of many wives, Emma, threatened to throw him out of the house. And Brigham Young once thundered in a speech in the Mormon Tabernacle itself that the faithful men of the church must absolutely stop spitting tobacco juice on the building's floor.

And even today some, no many, Mormons have difficulty leaving the past behind. Old habits die hard, and for Fundamentalist Mormons, the habit of polygamy hasn't died at all.

The Mormon faith is a belief of prophecy and revelation. Its leader communes directly with God - and more importantly, the faithful believe God talks back. Such was the case in 1890 when Utah desperately wanted to join the Union. Yet Washington made it clear that its populace would have to give up plural marriage before the prospect would even be considered. In a revelation of convenience, the Prophet of the moment ordered scores of Mormon men to choose a single wife and Utah became a state in 1896.

While plural marriage is officially a thing of the past in the mainstream LDS Church, the institution of a man with one wife is embraced with reverence and is an integral part of the faith. Lori's husband, Mark Hacking (as incompetent a killer as ever walked the earth) was destined upon his own death to become a God of his own planet. Yep, you read it right. Had he not killed his wife, Mormon orthodoxy holds that Mark, if he remained a righteous man to the end of his days, would get his own world, surrounded by his happy family. And since Mormon marriage stipulates a bond for "Time and all Eternity," then if the marriage hadn't worked out and had not ended in murder, too bad for the wife. At her own death, she was stuck with the man she had married long ago but couldn't stomach after living with him. It is a pesky detail the prophets haven't quite worked out yet.

Such beliefs are definitely different from those of mainstream Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims. Many fundamentalist Christians such as Baptists find Mormonism so obnoxious to their preconceptions of faith that they brand the church's practitioners a cult.

And much of the Republican base which will decide if Mitt Romney should receive the nomination is Baptist or a part of another similar sect. The former Massachusetts governor has a hill as difficult to climb as any slope at Snowbird.

When Every Woman's Nightmare was released in April, 2006, it was met with a firestorm of Mormon indignation in online reviews posted with Amazon. When Lori Hacking's mother took her pound of my flesh she said, "I'm Lori's mother, so I have a pretty good understanding of what happened. If Mr. Long wanted to find accurate information about us "Mormons" and the religious doctrines in which we believe, he should have asked Church Public Relations, not an excommunicated member who carries a grudge. As a lifetime member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I barely recognize the religion Mr. Long describes. And, this book is full of errors, errors, errors! Where are St. Martins "fact checkers"? I think Lori is having a pretty good laugh, barely recognizing herself in this book. Readers beware!"

I suppose I should have paid her after all. And yes, the church PR flacks were the first to get a call from me. Hmmm. What's more, I treated Thelma Soares gently, reverently in the book.

While Thelma berated me and my work online, Lori brother Paul came to my defense on Amazon saying that "Lori was every brother's dream and this book portrays who and what Lori really was. I feel the book was well written and provides a good basis for this case."

Paul continued, saying "This book is not anti-Mormon nor is the author anti-Mormon. The people who write that this book is anti-Mormon are portraying their own opinion. I know in my opinion that this book is nothing to do with the LDS Church, except for the fact, that this story occurred in Utah where so much of daily life is intertwined with the LDS Church."

Paul ended his Amazon review saying, "This story is a tragedy that has affected not only the families involved but everyone who become in contact with this story. This book, in general, captures the feelings, emotions, and facts that occurred over the search for Lori, Mark's trial, and all points in between."

In researching and writing Every Woman's Nightmare I learned several indisputable facts. Many Mormons aren't familiar their historical past. Others, because they grew up with Mormon doctrine don't understand why those of other faiths find their beliefs and practices strange, alien, bizarre, and frankly balderdash.

The Mormon faith will find itself increasingly under media scrutiny as GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney makes his quest for the White House. The candidate has thus far finessed soft ball questions from a timid press unwilling to offend. That likely will not last. Some snotty reporter will eventually have the gumption to ask the man who would be the leader of the free world if he truly believes in the Mormon doctrine of Blood Atonement as postulated by Brigham Young (look it up).

The questions will be hard, and an entire state will likely cringe, wanting to withdraw tortoise-like into its protective hard shell. Yet this time there will be no Amazon web site to provide an easy and unchallenged platform for those in denial to vent.

Suggested Reading:

No Man Knows My History, Fawn M. Brodie

The Mormon Murders, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith

Texas Vet Board Targets Dentists - Are Farriers Next?

Last February, ten Texas dentists received a cease and desist order essentially telling them to shut down their lucrative practices. Sources have told Texas Horse Talk Magazine these practitioners are making between $50,000 and $100,000 per year.

Horse owners and members of the trades who serve them have long worried that veterinarians would attempt someday to get control of sub-practices such as dentistry and hoof care. Farriers have long worried their days of being unregulated could come to an end. Horse owners often speak among themselves about the fear that veterinarians could someday put a stop to the practice themselves medicating their horses with drugs that otherwise require a prescription to be administered to humans.

Equine chiropractors already must practice under the watchful eye of a vet, although many of them also practice on people under their own license.

The effort is the outgrowth of an addition to the Veterinary Licensing Act passed by the legislature in 2005 that adds dentistry to those disciplines classified as veterinary medicine. Heretofore, the care of a horse's mouth was unregulated.

There are right at a million horses in Texas according to a study by Texas A&M. Each of them needs dental care, be it a simple float, removal of painful wolf teeth, or more, some considerably more. And if the animal is a performance horse, that may be considerably more.

Many large animal vets won't work on a horse's mouth. Others see that is a lucrative part of their practice.

Veterinarians with large animal practices have increasingly found it difficult to make a living in a profession that often requires "barn calls" to remote areas and the maintenance of costly facilities to house patients at their clinics, plus the purchase of an expensive "vet truck" to take on the road.

In fact, in Houston alone, three equine vets familiar to THT have abandoned their practice in the last two years.

Why? It is just so hard to get started and then maintain a client base. Small animal vets have it easier, first because there are vastly more patients in the dog and cat world than there are in the equine world, and because popping vaccinations and setting broken bones is both quick and easy.

And the trend appears to be national in scope. Rookie veterinarians fresh out of school are strapped with whopping debt and gravitate toward a practice that will be quickly lucrative. What is more, Texas' large animal vets are aging and their shoes are often not being filled with fresh talent. The sad fact is that although many would be vets dream of a life's work caring for horses, it is just an awfully tough way to make a living. It gets just that much harder when work once performed by a vet is increasingly going somewhere else, somewhere such as to a lay dentist.

Floating a horse's teeth is a small part of care for a horse's mouth, yet most vets who will even look there do little more for the animal beyond a simple float or removal of wolf teeth and would likely refer serious problems somewhere else - perhaps even to a lay dentist.

The fact is, vet school curriculum is woefully inadequate when it comes to teaching Texas veterinarians what to do inside the mouth of a horse. In a statement released by Texas A&M to THT, the school said, "For students who track towards mixed animal practice or large animal practice, there is an elective available in Equine dentistry. All of these students are required to take a general dentistry course. These happen usually in their third year. In the fourth year, students go into clinical rotations. Their exposure to dentistry and specifically equine dentistry is significant for through these rotations, as they often perform procedures on multiple animals daily."

Do they?

"They get about a week of equine dentistry in vet school," counters North Texas equine dentist Dena Corbin. "What's more, that's an elective course."

Corbin has vastly more education than that. She holds a four year veterinary technology degree and has completed four years of dental schooling as well, and has worked as a human dental assistant. Her knowledge of a horses' mouth is considerably more comprehensive than most Texas vets.

Yet A&M Spokeswoman Angela Clendenin says that equine dentists may face other obstacles they are not prepared for. "There are also underlying issues that affect dental health that are covered under the standard veterinary curriculum, such as anatomy, nutrition, toxicology, etc. that would not necessarily be available to the 'lay' dentist."

But one vet who has been through the A&M dental course says it was inadequate when she was there.

Longtime Texas Horse Talk columnist Dr. Marcia DuBois says that her equine dental education consisted of the standard week at Texas A&M, with no hands on lab work whatsoever.

"It was all looking over the shoulders of other students three or four deep into a horses mouth as the work was done on the horse by a professor or specialist," she said.

In fact, even the state veterinary licensing board now trying to shut down Texas equine dentists notified the School of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M in a 2004 report that its curriculum needed improvement saying "The Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine should examine its curriculum to determine if changes should be made to encourage increased proficiency in the skills of dentistry, especially for large animals."

"The Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine should examine its curriculum to determine if changes should be made to encourage increased proficiency in the skills of dentistry, especially for large animals."

Soon Texas horse owners will not have a choice in dental care. The law is on the side of the board because it clearly states that included in the practice of veterinary medicine is dentistry.

On February 23, 2007, the board sent Corbin and the nine other Texas equine dentists the letter stating in part that "advertising and/or practicing animal dentistry by a person not licensed as a veterinarian is illegal." (Corbin has advertised in THT, and worked on management's horses).

The letter stated that Corbin (and her colleagues who received a similar notification) was in violation of the Veterinary Licensing Act which defines veterinary medicine to include, veterinary surgery, reproduction and obstetrics, dentistry, ophthalmology, dermatology, cardiology and any other discipline or specialty of veterinary medicine." The letter went on to say that a person may not "practice, attempt or offer to practice veterinary medicine unless the person holds a veterinary license."

Furthermore, the letter told Corbin and her colleagues that even the words Equine Dentistry could not be used in advertising because "the public can reasonably believe from these words that you are legally authorized and qualified to engage in equine dentistry, which you are not."

But a bushel of Texas horse owners would dispute that. Helmcamp acknowledged to THT that the board had received 39 letters of complaint from irate horse owners who are angered that their dentists are about to be put out of business. The board is almost certain to hear from scores more whose comfort level with an equine dentist working in their horse's mouth is substantially greater than watching a vet attempt to do the same procedures.

Finally, Helmcamp said in the letter, "The Board intends to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any continued illegal activity."

Thus far, a handful of Texas dentists have sought counsel. Others have not. Still others naively don't believe what is happening to them is for real.

The nine member state veterinary board includes six vets and three public members including two lawyers plus a member who is billed as a ranch owner and contractor. Of the vets on the board, half work on both large and small animals. The remainder serves mostly dogs and cats. None are equine dentists.

THT served the board with requests for public information for fifteen items under the state's public records law. On July 16, the board responded refusing to make public information on nine of the letter's demands. Included in the requests were the names of the ten equine dentists who had received cease and desist letters informing they must shut down their practices.

The board has also hired a new and fresh general counsel whose first assignment on her first day at work on September 4, is to put the dentists out of business.

Early this year the board told the dentists they could not practice. This spring the war escalated when a board member wrote an emailed memo obtained by THT urging an April 30, "Stakeholder Meeting on Equine Dentistry." In a strident, almost hysterical letter, the trustee wrote "It is your livelihood, your education and hard years of practice they are taking away!"

The official said "it is clear to me that lay-people are gradually 'chipping away' at the profession in every jurisdiction. Each jurisdiction has been fighting this battle alone and in their own way and losing a piece of the practice as a result.. The board member, who is not a dentist, continued, typing in all caps, RIGHT NOW, THE VETERINARY PROFESSION IN OUR OWN GREAT STATE IS BEING CALLED TO ARMS!!"

The letter had the tone of an activist and advocate, not the words an objective state regulator.

A meeting of the board's rules committee was posted for April 30, 2007, but was subsequently canceled.

Indeed. Equine dentists have been under attack by the veterinary profession in other states. Moreover, they have won the right to pursue their practice in court in at least one case when they fought back.

In mid July, the New York Supreme Court ruled that an equine dentist there could return to his 30-year-old practice after the state's Racing and Wagering Board began to enforce a law that allowed only vets and vet techs to perform dentistry. Chris Brown, 63, had worked for some of racing's biggest names such as Bobby Frankel, Nick Zito, and Bill Mott, as an equine dentist.

A Minnesota case is now pending in which an equine dentist named Chris Johnson is represented by the Libertarian Institute for Justice charging that the Minnesota Board of Veterinary Medicine has been taken over by vets who want to "stifle competition, raise prices, and reduce consumer choices."

One criticism often made by veterinarians and their advocates is that equine dentists are unprepared for a medical or veterinary emergency should something go wrong, for example, with sedation. State regulators echo the critique.

Dewey E. Helmcamp III, a lawyer who serves as executive director of the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners says dentists practicing in Texas are unequipped to handle such an emergency because they aren't trained to care for the "whole horse" as a veterinarian is trained.

Hogwash, say the dentists who counter, asking how would Helmcamp know what training the state's dentists have had? Neither he, nor members of the board have even asked.

In fact, one of the operations the board is trying to shut down is Weatherford dentist Randy Riedinger and his Texas Institute of Equine Dentistry www.equinedentistryschool.com (Reitenger has written several columns on the horse's mouth for THT). He has 15 years working as an equine dentist. The school has been in operation since 2004 and is licensed by the Texas Workforce Commission as a trade school.

Riedinger counters saying that students at his school are instructed to secure the services of a vet if sedation is required on an animal.

"In fact, for years we used no sedation at all," he told THT.

Moreover, he says that dentists have been the innovators and researchers when it comes to a horse's mouth. Riedinger says virtually all of the breakthroughs in both studies and improvements in equine dentistry equipment in recent years have come from dentists, not veterinarians.

"It's a bogus deal. The instructional books are written by lay people or equine dentists. And we've invented the tools," the dentist said.

Riedinger charges that the move to shut he and his colleagues down is all about money. "These large animal vets get out of school and find they can't make money, and then they see they can make $600 per day doing dental work."

He said that Texas dentists have made repeated attempts to set up a licensing program with the Texas Veterinary Medical Association and have a good relationship with the veterinarian organization.

As recently as a month ago, Riedinger says "we offered the TVMA a licensing program and the vet board said no way, don't do it. Hell, we have vets come to our school."

And Helmcamp acknowledges that although there may be room for additional training in dentistry among the state's large animal vets, they are required to complete 17 hours of continuing education each year to maintain their licenses. Some of that CE work could be in "wet labs" where practicing vets learn dental techniques.

Helmcamp admitted that the board was willing to negotiate with the state's equine dentists - after he puts them out of business, telling THT he could foresee the day when lay horse dentists would be licensed by the board and be allowed to practice under the supervision of a veterinarian as is currently done with equine chiropractors.

However, in a classic Catch 22, when asked why the board didn't negotiate to bring the dentists into compliance with state regulations without costly litigation before he shut down their practices and deprived them of their livelihood, Helmcamp said, in effect, they shouldn't be breaking the law now by practicing dentistry.

What's more, Helmcamp and his board hold all the cards.