I
certainly agree with all you said here. I have tried and gotten to b and
c. Have also tried twitches, lip chains, putting her in the v of a borad
fence and a gate with stalls behind her. All is well until she feels the needle
penetrate the skin. Any suggestions along the lines of a topical
anesthetic? Oral sedative like you do for cats before a car ride?
Otherwise, I'm down to calling the zoo for a dart gun. (I think I'm
kidding here.)
-----Original Message----- From: Heidi Smith
[mailto:heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 8:14
AM To: Carol Stiles; ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Re:
[RC] needle shy horse
That works unless a) you have an open-format
trailer, b) your horse is SO sensitive that he freaks and ends up astride of a
divider, or c) your horse now associates the trailer with injections and
refuses to load. (I have situation a, as do a great many
folks, and I've personally observed both situations b and
c.)
I much prefer either a twitch or a lip chain
(depending on which works on the particular horse--some do better with
one or the other) or just snubbing such horses up in a stout
corner and administering the injection from across a fence or a
panel. But I've also found that in many cases, the needle-shyness comes
from "operator anticipation"--I've had no trouble whatsoever with many horses
over the years that the owners report to be needle-shy. OTOH, I do have
a stallion that is needle-shy--but then he was pretty much a rescue case and
was not even halterbroke until he was 14, and even at 23, he is still a little
tweaky about some things (including twitches and lip chains), having been
relatively untouched for so much of his life. Nonetheless, once snubbed,
he knows he's been "had" and has to put up with whatever is being done.
Likewise, he is enough of a "Wile-E Coyote" that I have a hunch if he ever got
"hurt" in a horse trailer, he'd think twice about ever getting back in
one. (As it is, he's pretty good about that.) He's a kind horse,
but after 14 years of self-preservation without any human intervention, one
can kind of understand why the little wheels in his brain turn the way
they do. (Almost all of the rest of the horses on my
place--50-some-odd--can be injected either IM or IV by a lone person if
necessary, with the loose lead rope simply flopped over one
arm.)
