Our small herd recently welcomed a new member, Sparkles, a rising 3 year old Arabian filly. She is a truly lovely pony, friendly and very considerate of her hairy and wooly herdmates. I don’t know much detail of her homes before us, this is her third and she seems to have had fairly conventional training. She was couple hours drive away from us and I couldn’t attend the pre-purchase vet check. The vet called me after and thought it was worth noting, repeatedly, that she had a hard time trying to get a look at Sparkles mouth.
As Sparkles settled in here it was time for a wormer, as this video below shows, she was quite a bit less than impressed by that idea. She also showed aversion to me trying to handle her mouth without the worming tube and certainly did not appreciate attempts to hold her still with the halter.
It is handy have a horse that complies with what you want to do, but I prefer willing participation and engagement.
So, I took the halter off and we started training properly, working on changing her emotional response to the mouth handling by pairing it with treats, allowing her to choose whether she wants to participate and to set the pace. Soon she was actively touching the worming tube with her lips and putting it in her mouth. I then trained her to rest her chin on my open palm. We then put the 2 together, added liquid filled syringes and ta da! Sparkles pulled a few funny faces at the taste of the wormer but was otherwise fine. And the kicker, when I offered the tube again after the wormer she took it straight away.