What one shot can tell you

Yearly vaccination time has rolled around again, and I won't say I haven't been dreading it. Over the last few years I've gotten pretty good at giving shots. I've dealt with fence climbers, sqaushers, lungers, and all types of evaders. Other than one particularly bad moment when I informed Sunny that if he was that intent on not getting a penicillin shot, he could just die - he got better - I haven't had too many failures. (in my defense, it wasn't actually a life-death situation: Sunny was newly gelded and had some swelling. He was at the time basically unhandled, and very, very uncooperative. I was armed with a too short needle, and not enough patience. He won-I lost.)

At present, in addition to the two who own me, there are seven more large, and potentially uncooperative equines to get through, I keep having visions of shot reactions.... Basically, giving shots is not one of my favorite things.

Since I can't do anything much to prevent a shot reaction, but I can (maybe) do something about the squashing, evading and lunging, I've been working on shot-etiquette for the last couple of years. We, thankfully, haven't had to give too many shots other than the yearly ones, but horses do get into things, and among other freak incidents, in one year we had two horses with abscessed hooves: Sunny, foodie that he is, decided penicillin shots weren't so bad... as long as he got some grain to go with them we could stick him with all the needles we wanted. What's more, he'd happily soak his foot in that warm bucket even in the -5'F winter weather. That's my boy!

Then there's Pinto Boy....

Pinto-Boy (AKA Thunder or P-B), is a 3 year old half-Arabian gelding and my current project. He was a weanling at the time. Poor boy -- he was so small even alternating sides of his neck with hindquarter shots, he was so sore. He didn't mind the bucket part, but just try to stand by his neck! For the last two years just scratching his neck has resulted in a sudden scoot away, (and he's only slowly getting over being totally convinced the vet will kill him). Well, thanks to some sound advice from the kind posters on another blog, I collected an ink pen and my trusty clicker and spent a couple of evenings just clicking and giving him "shots." Tonight, although he was my worst-behaved patient, his "evasion" consisted of one whole step to the side. Wow. What a complete and utter difference. It's funny how the little things can make you feel really good. We have West Nile yet to do (yes, I know - it's late) and if he's as good then, I think I can say he's turned a big corner.

Tomorrow we'll see how he does with strange men -- the farrier is coming to do feet, and last time P-B was not fully convinced the poor man didn't have a needle in his pocket. Thankfully he (farrier) was very patient and was willing to walk up to him bent over so as to appear less threatening. Maybe P-B'll do better this time (I hope!).