I do odd things here.  Partially because I care too much and partially because they work.

Last week I was talking about syringing meds into a horses mouth with kindness.  This week I’m going to continue that thought with deworming.  Oh, the dribbling effect doesn’t work with wormer, but kindness does.

This all came about when I unintentionaly killed one of my dogs with horse worm medicine.  I was giving my horses Ivermectin and some of it dripped out of one of the horse’s mouth onto the concrete isle way.  I picked up the blob, but didn’t really clean all of it up right away.  My Border Collie/cross dog came over and licked at what was squished into the concrete.  I didn’t think a whole lot about it because she was getting Ivermectin in her heart worm medication.  Well shortly there after she was not feeling well.  I brought her to a vet (not my normal vet because they didn’t have any openings) and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her.  She was there a week and they said to bring her home, maybe she would eat there.  Well she wasn’t eating and that’s why I brought her in, in the first place.  Took her to another vet and she had been poisoned.  I went nuts.  With what?  Who could have done that?  She was only three years old.  I need to know, I had three other dogs at home.  Well it wasn’t for almost 8 years before I heard that Ivermectin was poison to Collie breeds.  I was devastated.

So after that I became extremely careful about horse wormer.  If any dropped it was picked up right away, totally.  I started gently wiping the horses muzzles with a wet wash clothe to make sure the dogs got absolutely nothing.  It was then I realized that they liked having their muzzles cleaned of the extra wormer smooshed on their lips.  After that they didn’t seem to mind taking the wormer, as long as I followed up with a wet wash clothe.

Look I can’t explain it.  I didn’t sit here and do research about it.  I just know that they like it and look forward to getting their lips wiped.  Even the Clydesdale who wants nothing near her mouth or nose.  When she was really sick with the spider bite she was getting all kinds of antibiotics.  They were strong and bitter.  We even started drilling out the middle of carrots, placing the pills in the carrot to get the pills into her.  Ever since then she hates anyone coming at her with a syringe or anything to the mouth, and when a Clydesdale decides you’re not getting anything into her mouth, trust me, you’re not.  But with the wormer, no problem.  I let her smell it and she says she doesn’t want it, but then will drop her head and take it.

Now the intranasal flu is a different story.  We have to keep pushing carrots into her mouth and then Surprise!! Squirt!

It’s amazing how many tricks my vet can come up with.  She’s an amazing woman.

I’m certainly not telling you how to deworm your horse, but it works for me and my crew. What I will tell you is that wormer can be deadly for some dogs.  Be mindful.