Thursday, September 6, 2012

Deworming Crisis, Averted!

Some of you will remember that Imogen (yes, her official new name!) previously had a dewormer-phobia-itis. She was terrified of having things shoved forcefully into her mouth (and who can blame her), and I spent some failed time trying to reestablish some trust by giving her syringes with molasses in them. That did not particularly go over well, and the last thing I wanted to do was frighten or upset her. I left the issue alone until now, when it was time to be dewormed again. When she is mine (why she is still at the work farm is beyond me! Come on people!), we will obviously be doing fecals and whatnot... but this will have to do for now. To be honest, I was not all that keen on getting into a fight with her, so I broke down my options into a series of start goals and end goals:

1) Pick up tube of dewormer
2) Get dewormer into mouth of horse
3) Horse swallows dewormer

It boiled down to a very duh moment - all I have to do is get the dewormer into her system, right? Into her mouth somehow, right? Oh duh... instead of terrifying her with the syringe, why not just mix it into her breakfast?

I made up grains, added dewormer to hers, mixed it in with lots of water and stirred exceedingly well. Then I held my breath to see if she would actually eat it or not.

She licked her bucket clean. Not one bit of the dewormer went to waste... and it would have had I administered it directly into her mouth. She would have spit half of it back into my face like a Jurassic Park style Dilophosaurus.

Sometimes all it takes is a little critical thinking to figure out a solution to a potentially big issue. Crisis averted, and end result achieved. Everybody wins.

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9 comments:

  1. UnknownSeptember 6, 2012 at 8:15 PM

    My old gelding had to be de-wormed this way, every single time. He wasn't scared of the de-wormer, he was just a stubborn son of a gun who simply refused to let us shove stuff in his mouth, period. I didn't blame him, that "apple" flavor isn't very apple-ly...

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  2. LeeshhSeptember 6, 2012 at 8:23 PM

    Lucky! Tried that with countless (incredibly spoiled) horses. They wouldn't touch a bite.

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  3. AnonymousSeptember 6, 2012 at 8:43 PM

    Mmmmolassssessssssssss.......

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  4. AndreaSeptember 7, 2012 at 2:56 AM

    Hypocaffeinic, http://uncatchablenumber257.blogspot.com/2012/01/great-molasses-caper-or-how-my-master.html .... lol!

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  5. NiamhSeptember 7, 2012 at 6:13 AM

    Hooray!!!!!

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  6. K.K.September 7, 2012 at 10:09 AM

    Last time I wormed I mixed it into their grain like you did. I was so exhausted from them thinking I was trying to kill them I just decided to go for it. Our new horse gobbled it right up, but fatso was like "hell no, you are trying to poison me by putting that disgusting stuff in my food. Evil woman, I'm not falling for it!" But after 45 minutes of patiently waiting his hunger made him give in.

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  7. JaeSeptember 7, 2012 at 2:31 PM

    I can't wait until she's yours officially. Baited breath!!

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  8. MarySeptember 7, 2012 at 5:57 PM

    Hmm, I just figured the reason it wasn't put into the food directly was because it would interfere with the potency or something. I just never questioned the syringe approach. It seems the food idea is easier on everyone. Good Job Imogene! And you too Andrea.

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  9. AndreaSeptember 7, 2012 at 8:42 PM

    I figure it is all going to the same place anyway :)

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