Smile! Tara doesn’t do dull and boring
John Govier chats to Tara Pile from The Dental Hygenius
When I was a youngster, it would take three grown men to extract a decaying tooth. A dentist, a doctor, and my father.
It was a very different time - and for those who were lucky enough to miss this period of absolute nightmares, let me enlighten you:
Dentists needed a doctor present to administer the anaesthetic. It wasn’t as simple as a quick injection.
Just writing about it now and the memories come flooding back - especially the toxic smell as the mask went over my nose and mouth and I was told to start counting backwards:
10, 9, 8, 7…………
"Can you come and hold John's hand?" the dentist would ask dad.
Not because I needed reassurance - but because he knew I would fight back with all the veracity of a Tasmanian Devil!
I’d do everything possible to get that mask off my face. That smell. Those psychedelic dreams. Urgh!
More often than not, Mum found it all too distressing and would try to make it Dad's responsibility to accompany me to appointments.
They'd already given me a spoonful of jam with breakfast which concealed the sedative I needed just to get me half way up Broad Street and into the surgery, but I soon associated the two events and there was a LOT of tears, not all of them mine!
Strangely, and I can't really remember exactly when it happened, I managed to lose my fear of dentists and, thankfully, I’ve no problem at all in paying a regular visit these days.
Although I do have to confess to still having an envy of today's generation who missed the experience of the gas cylinder being wheeled in, and that awful plastic mask coming towards you. I'm jealous of their pearly whites and their lack of silver-grey amalgam.
I know that some people of a similar generation were affected for life and still feel the panic setting in at the mere mention of a filling. (I apologise if that’s you - but it gets better from here on, promise!)
So it was an absolute delight to chat to one of the new breeds of dental professionals - one who believes that treatment should be as pain-free and stress-free as possible.
And not only that, you don't have to go to her. She'll come to you.
Meet Tara
Tara Pile was born in Plymouth "a very long time ago" - her words, not mine! - although she spent 18 years living in over the border in Cornwall.
Her career path since then has been anything but predictable.
"I joined the military - the Royal Air Force - in 1998 as an aircraft engineer," she tells me.
Seven years of engineering followed, including six operational tours of Iraq and the Middle East before she turned 25.
Then she retrained. She became a dental hygienist and served another 10 years in the Air Force before being made redundant when her trade became obsolete.
For many people, that might have been the point to settle down and find something a little less complicated.
Not Tara. She moved to Holland, where she bought a property and had her own horse.
And then, after five years, she decided that life in Holland was too "safe and slightly boring".
I ask her what she means.
"So, I’m a thrill seeker in general," she explains, "and I find dentistry, when you're in the clinic and you're sitting around all day, can become a little bit monotonous."
She needed something outside work that would be more challenging.
"And so when I moved to Africa and I’d drive past elephants, lions and rhino on a daily basis, that made it absolutely more exciting on my day." The memory makes her smile.
It sounds quite a long way from that ‘safe’ haven in Holland.
Out of Africa
Tara spent nearly five years in Africa, where she started a family, before returning to the UK just before Covid in 2020.
Africa still owns a piece of her.
"I like Plymouth," she tells me when I ask her to compare the two. "I think it's a beautiful city."
Then she pauses.
"I also…” She takes a couple of seconds before continuing; “…Africa has half my heart. And my horse is still out there, so I visit on a regular basis."
It was during those years of travelling, living and working in different places that Tara's rather unusual approach to life continued to develop. And dentistry was never entirely left behind.
But there was another change of uniform to come: Tara rejoined the Royal Navy and spent five years serving in Plymouth.
It was while she was in the Navy that the idea for her current business really began to take shape.
"I was cross-decking from one ship to another," she said.
Now, if you've never heard the expression ‘cross-decking’, it probably doesn't immediately sound particularly dangerous.
You’d be wrong!
Mission improbable
"I had to climb out of the side of the ship and go down a rope ladder onto a RIB, which is like a speedboat, across the sea to another ship and then climb up the side of that one."
And somewhere between one ship and the next, Tara had an idea.
"If I can work in these sorts of extremes, dentistry should be accessible to everyone on dry land because it doesn't move for a start - and there's no risk of drowning."
I have to admit, it's difficult to fault her logic!
The changing face of dentistry
Before we get to the purple caravan sitting in Tara's driveway, it's worth quickly revisiting my childhood dental experience, just for a moment. Because dentistry really has changed.
"Since I started in 2005," Tara says, "it’s come on in leaps and bounds."
She offers an analogy that makes perfect sense to me: "I’ve always equated it to the fact that when I learned to drive, I learned in a car with a choke - now we drive automatics and electric cars."
When Tara started out, there wasn't the same amount of education and knowledge about minimally invasive and preventative treatment that there is now.
Dentistry, she says, is much more gentle. It's no longer simply about filling or extracting a tooth and moving on to the next patient.
The aim, she says, is to keep people's natural teeth for as long as possible, using prevention and education to try to avoid more serious treatment later
That matters - particularly to the people Tara and her team are trying to reach.
More than just a smile
"We cover Devon and Cornwall," she tells me.
"We go as far up as Exeter at the moment, over to Barnstaple and then down as far as Bodmin and Wadebridge into Cornwall. And everywhere in between."
But it's not geography that determines whether someone’s a suitable patient.
"We’re basically aiming to look after people who cannot get to a dentist, are too scared to go, or are physically or mentally immobile."
And that includes people who carry memories of dentistry from my generation.
"We get a lot of people who are worried and have had childhood experiences that were a problem because it's very much about active memories."
Plus there are elderly people living in care homes, residential homes, nursing homes or simply in their own homes being cared for by somebody else.
Tara describes couples where one person is immobile and the other is looking after them, and neither of them leaves the house.
"So therefore we go and look after both of them - and it's not just about the dentistry."
That last bit is interesting.
"Sometimes we’ll sit and have a coffee and we can have a chat for half an hour because we might be the only people they see day in day out."
That says a lot about Tara's approach.
"We see a lot of people that say 'I'm really embarrassed. I don't know what to do with my smile. I've lost all my confidence, but I'm so petrified.'"
For some of those people, being seen in their own home, in surroundings where they feel safe, can make the difference between avoiding the dentist altogether and finally getting the treatment they need.
And Tara doesn't see herself as being in competition with conventional dental practices.
As she rather neatly puts it, there are "plenty of mouths to go 'round".
Meet Flossy
And then there’s Flossy. A 34-year-old purple caravan.
Tara bought Flossy through Facebook Marketplace, from a couple who’d planned to go travelling but had been unable to because of medical challenges.
Her husband, a former Royal Marine, apparently assumed they'd bought themselves a caravan for holidays. He couldn’t have been further from the truth!
"I bought the caravan and took it back to my husband who asked, 'Are we going camping with it?'
“Nope! I’m going to convert it into a dental clinic!'"
They spent their Christmas leave converting it. And Tara made him paint it purple.
Today, Flossy stays at home. She doesn't travel anymore. The actual dental work is carried out by teams in a fleet of smaller vans, while Flossy has become the base for sterilising equipment and, occasionally, somewhere patients can be treated.
Inside, it’s rather more clinical than the purple exterior might suggest.
Instruments arrive back and are washed and put through an ultrasonic bath. They're checked with a magnifying glass, rinsed in distilled water, bagged and then put through the steriliser before being transferred to the clean area and prepared for use by the teams.
It's a surprisingly serious operation hiding inside a rather unlikely-looking purple caravan.
Perhaps that's Tara all over. "I like to take old or unloved items and bring back a purpose," she laughs. And I’m not convinced she’s only talking about caravans!
Back to the roots
Tara's career has taken her a very long way from Plymouth.
The RAF. Iraq. Dentistry. Holland. Africa. The Royal Navy. Elephants and rope ladders.
And then, after 25 years away, she came back.
She set up her business, The Dental Hygenius, in April 2024, knowing she was leaving the military, and based herself in Brixton, just a few miles outside Plymouth.
It makes obvious sense as a starting point for a business covering the whole of the South West.
Tara describes it as being "smack bang in the middle" of South Devon, giving her access to North, East and West Devon as well as Cornwall.
But that's not really why she's here. "When I came back to my roots after leaving the Navy, I noticed how beautiful Plymouth is and the people in it."
There were people here she remembered from when she was younger. People she had, as she puts it, forgotten all about.
"And I really wanted to help those I’d been around when I was younger."
So after a life spent looking for the next challenge, Tara has returned to the city where she started.
She's still a thrill seeker. She's still got a horse in Africa. She's still expanding the business and has ambitious plans for an additional 7½ ton fully equipped mobile dental clinic - probably in purple.
And, above all, she's still not doing dull and boring.
Only now, instead of climbing down the side of a warship or driving through the African bush, she's helping lead a team whose small white vans head out across Devon and Cornwall to visit people who might otherwise struggle to get to a dentist.
And always waiting patiently back at base is Flossy.
A purple caravan in a Brixton driveway, born on Facebook Marketplace and given a second life as a dental clinic.
"The future's bright," Tara reassures me. "The future is purple!"
Tara’s website: The Dental Hygenius
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