You know you are Feral when...

You care more about ordering and figuring out your horses deworming schedule for the next year

then your own doctors/dentists appointments.  

Seriously.

WARNING - LONG RUN ON SENTENCES AHEAD - WARNING

Why am I doing this anyhow?  Once its delivered I may as well squirt and rub the contents all over my hand, arm, hair, favorite barn jacket, jeans, lead rope, boots, fence, water tank etc. as we all know thats where it will end up anyway. And as far as those flavored ones? Pshaw, yea right.  As soon as I approach the paddock with that tiny innocuous tube in hand he knows something is up, giving me his best squinty-stinkeye look, curling his upper lip and walking backwards like I have a frilly pink tutu for him to try on to impress other geldings ...All the while I am talking like I never do, high pitched crazy nurse-talk, trying to convince him that I am not poisoning him... really.   I have even shown him the weight marker on the tube, pointing out that it is on the correct weight for dosage, but he seems to disagree that no, he could never possibly weigh that much and "it's set waaay too high and you're trying to kill me and thank you I dont want to take it today, how about tomorrow? Tuesday?  uhmm never? "...

Of course in the end, after I go through my litany of pleadings, mom-type threats and finally my own squinty-stinkeye look, he gives a big sigh, closes his eyes and lets me squirt that tiny innocent tube of worm death in the corner of his mouth... but we both know this is only the beginning of the deworming dance.  As if a wrestling bell has rung, on cue while trying to use all of my 129 lbs of she-man strength to lift his nose up in the air like the directions say to do afterwards, he somehow has managed to have multiplied the contents 100 fold in his mouth to share/spew everyone and everything within a 10 foot radius at minimum in spastic sprinkler style motion.  Rain gear IS mandatory for child bearing-age observers who think they can help, but they usually end up stumbling backwards, wide-eyed and mumbling that they have to go and pick up something on the way home....now.

But unfortunately the dance continues (cue "The Omen" theme movie music) ~ Im  hanging on to his halter in the 'darn if im gonna let go because Im not thinking' grip, and he is sticking his exorcist tongue out soooo far, bringing up bad childhood memories of zoo visits involving gargantuan giraffes licking glass parititions repeatedly, mental-illishly with a loong purple tongue horrifying/imprinting forever on my then 10 year old brain, but this one, no, he's trying to lick MY elbow, oozing in all directions copious amounts that will surely poison even the littlest earthworms below that thought they were safe in their tiny happy world.  And of course this triggers bad motherhood moments in my tiny brain of when my youngest daughter as a toddler  had eaten a whole box of  natural fruit roll ups and we all paid the piper in HER diaper weight on that one in 5-second intervals and we couldnt do a thing but wait...and clean up...and wait...*shudder*...it takes days for me to recuperate mentally when we deworm.  So each time I swear never again will we do this dance, but unfortunately those two months go by and I seem to suffer from short term dewormer poisoning memory loss...or I feel crazy guilty that my poor horse could be hiding little evil aliens in his bowels that will take over at least our corner of the world and make us harbor them comfortably with little cigars and plushy robes while they watch Spongebob and Gardening channels all day long.  Sigh.

So anyhow, thats how we all get de-wormed here
and I check out clear &  negative at the doctors when I remember to go.
even for parasites.  

Thanks Pfizer.

~

PS    yes i know, proper horse training would probably take care of this sprinkler action issue,
but in reality, whats the fun in that?

Next post -
 our secret location = horse shopping horrors
kinda ties into #1 here
uhm.
really...
~