How to Deworm your Dragon

Clicker training to the rescue!

You want to know how I got some dewormer in the Dragon, right?

For new readers, an intro to the Dragon:

Well, the first part was done by the excellent barn staff, who had no trouble emptying a whole tube of dewormer into the fire-breathing orifice. But the Dragon was not expecting vile-tasting deadly poison from his friends, and said clearly “no way” to the second tube. (He is large, and one tube is not enough. Which is why I left them a big cow dosing gun to empty 2 tubes of dewormer into. But apparently I did not check that the dosing gun was working…. )

So when I got to the barn I found an unused tube of dewormer, a dysfunctional dosing gun, and a skeptical dragon. I put on my thinking cap (replacing my tinfoil hat, just for a few minutes) and got to work.

Step one: cover the entire sink area with dewormer and applesauce trying to load the dosing gun.

2. Prop dosing gun up in the empty stall.

3. Fetch the Dragon out of the paddock, while watching Kass and Friday invade the empty stall

4. Put the Dragon in different empty stall, fetch the dosing gun before Friday the One Horse Wrecking Crew knocks it over

5. Approach the Dragon with the dosing gun.

6. Watch the Dragon fling his head six ways from Sunday*, but mostly at high elevation…

7. Change plan.

Okay I will just describe Plan B and how it worked. I have been teaching him to let me put my fingers in his mouth for a click and a treat. First I give him the instruction "hand in mouth", which means “I'm going to put my hand in your mouth and I expect you to stand still”. We have worked up to about 2 seconds before click and treat. We practiced that a couple of times to prepare, using licorice to ensure a high level of interest.

Next I put a small amount of dewormer on my fingers and pushed my knuckles in his mouth enough to get it open and smear the paste inside... and quick gave him a big handful of senior feed... FORTUNATELY THIS WAS NOT THE PASTE WITH THE TASTE OF DEATH**. This one was relatively benign.

The mouth full of feed (or some kind of hard crunchy treat,) is good because the paste will adsorb to it and get the taste out of his mouth faster.

Next I did two or three rounds of just hand in mouth training followed with licorice treat.

Then I repeated the maneuver with the paste and then the training, I think three more times before I got most of the paste in there.

I will be training the Dragon with the dosing syringe, and training myself with how to load the stupid thing... so future episodes of How to Deworm your Dragon will not be so dramatic!

A helpful note from a reader “I give peppermints to stimulate their taste, then dewormer.” Definitely will do that next time. Like what I just heard about Victorian theater, overstimulate the audiences’ eyes with a floodlight, so their irises contract and they don’t see what’s happening on a dim stage. Magic!

*Although Friday’s sister really is named Sunday, this is just a figure of speech. I’m not sure what it means.

**The dewormer with the taste of death was Equimax. The less horrible one, according to the reactions of the horses, was Zimectrin Gold. Barn staff did not confess to doing an actual taste test, nor will I.