Worming Time

So I chose today to worm the horses. I don't know why, maybe just because it was (past) time to worm the horses. If you didn't know, horses have worms. They must be kept under control, or the worms will steal away the horses health and vitality.

So this worm medicine is a long plastic tube with a trigger handle on the end of it. The game is to stick the thin tube in the horse's mouth and squirt the white paste as far back on the tongue as the horse will allow. Simple, right?

Stand on your tippy toes, reach your arms as far up in the air as you can. Now picture a spot just two inches above your longest finger. That is where you will find Montana's mouth when he gets a clue that you have one of those thin tubes of white paste in your hand.

Already suspicious at being invited into his stall before the food was distributed, he watched me warily as I tried to sneak the thin white tube past his watchful eye to hit just that spot at the back of his mouth. My finger on the trigger, I whipped the tube to his mouth. More quickly, his head snapped up as my thumb pressed the plunger. A big glop of white paste ricocheted off my chin and onto my collar. Being a big horse, he needed the full plunger full. But all was not lost, as Moon is smaller and I traded the full syringe for the one with now just the right amount in it for Moon.

Montana is nothing if not reasonable, so I did try to reason with him long enough to try another trick that worked...this time. I held his head in the air for a few moments to deter a spit, and then quickly got him some of his favorite food so that I could move on to Moon, who was by now pacing up and down her stall, complaining heartily that she had not yet been seen to.


I've been told that in the old days the cowboys just used to give their horses a chaw of tobacco. Number one, that's bad for your teeth. Number two, we don't keep a spittoon in the barn.