Mary Poppins had the right idea with a “Spoon Full Of Sugar makes the medicine go down.”

When I was a kid I was sick all the time.  Mostly Asthma but there was always liquid, or pills, along with it and every other germs that came my way.  My mother tried to be creative about getting the meds down, but it was still a hassle.  To this day I have a hard time swallowing some pills.  She’d crush the pills and put water in the spoon to make them easier to swallow.  Mary Poppins didn’t exist with her spoon and sugar.  The liquid medicines were mostly Cherry flavor.  I still don’t do cherry anything.  I would make my parakeet taste the liquid before I would drink it.  The bird lived to be 13.  I think it was all the antibiotics.

So I get this horse in and I’m told he doesn’t like anything by his mouth.  And he doesn’t like any pressure on his poll.  And guess what time it is kids????  No it’s not Howdy Doody Time, it’s time to worm.  New horse, doesn’t know what I’m about yet and he’s not interested in getting wormed.

Now I know that since they came out with this intra-nasal Flu thing none of the horses like it sprayed up their nose.  I never liked, and still don’t like, nasal spray either, so I can well appreciate their resistance.  My mother used to sit on me to get the drops in my nose which promptly ran down my throat.  My horses get panicky when the vet comes near their nose.  But my horses know the difference between me with wormer and the vet with the spray.  This new horse does not, and he doesn’t want to hear about the difference.

So borrowing from Mary Poppins I decided I have to get him to understand the difference.  First step is to have him let me near his mouth and nose.  He’s not sure he can trust me yet so we’re taking it one step at a time.  The other day I brought the wormer, gave him his favorite treat that his owner left me which are called horse muffins, and let him smell the wormer tube.  He did and knew exactly what I had in mind.  Head went up.  Now he is 17 plus hands, we were out in the field, and I’m 5’5″ and shrinking.  I let him express himself and let him know that I understood.  The previous stable man told me that he felt he had been roughed up over the years, and I’m sure he is right.  So then why should this horse trust me, a perfect stranger?  He has no reason to.

So now the tough part of gaining his trust and teaching him the difference.  Oh sure, I could get the twitch and shove it down his throat, but what would that be teaching him.  That I’m just like everyone else?  That’s not training, that’s just getting something done and moving on to the next task at hand.  I rubbed the wormer tube all down his neck and face, put it by his mouth and moved it back away but kept contact.  When he relaxed I tried again, and repeated the same process.  When he relaxed again I patted him and left.  Today I went down with a horse muffin, and an empty wormer tube dipped in molasses.  Those horse muffin things have so much molasses, they actually are over kill in the smell department.  Same procedure.  Muffin first and then syringe  with molasses moved around his lips and in the corner of his mouth.  His initial reaction when I put it in the corner was to pull up.  Then he licked his lips and said “what is that stuff”?  Of course I am wearing molasses on my face, arms, and shirt, but we took a step forward.  I will keep repeating this until he’ll let me squirt some molasses in his mouth.  Then I hope to dip the wormer syringe into the molasses and then squirt the wormer in.

I taught the babies to accept the bit with molasses on it and I’ve been using molasses or apple sauce for years to get the meds down.  I was even hollowing out carrots with a drill bit and putting pills in the carrots to get Dawnie (Clyde) to take her meds.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and Mary Poppins was on to something.  Of course time and patience never hurts either.  So he gets wormed a week later than the rest of the barn.  I’m okay with that, if he is.