ORAL SYRINGE - MAZAMA
HORSE: Mazama, 9yrs, Mustang gelding gathered in 2018 at 3yrs old from Devils Garden, CA.
SITUATION: Mazama aggressively avoids being wormed or sedated with an oral syringe. He demonstrates his aversion by running away at the sight of a syringe or, if constrained with a halter, severe head tossing to avoid the syringe being placed in his mouth.
GOAL: Mazama is calm and cooperative at liberty with administering oral medication. -
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Step 1: Establishing Baseline
Maz throws his head in the air and does everything possible to evade the oral syringe. This photo above shows his reaction to simply being touched near the mouth. I had a natural balance dentist appointment scheduled in two weeks so wanted to work on getting calm cooperation from him, completely at liberty.
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Step 2. Mouth Targeting to Hand
My first step was teaching Maz how to target his mouth to my hand, first as an isolated behavior and then with my other hand cradling his opposite cheek. He was marked for turning his head and touching the back of my fingers with the side of his mouth and then generalizing the same behavior to an empty syringe.
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Step 3. Spoonful of Sugar
Marking and reinforcing mouth targeting the syringe seemed to work initially but the last few sessions became progressively worse. Maz was getting over aroused, tense, and throwing his head in the air to avoid the syringe due to conflicting emotions. So I decided to try the Spoonful of Sugar Technique to mark touching the target instead of marking for touching the oral syringe, and it worked perfectly. The sequence is:
• Ask Maz to stand at the stationary target while I move away from him (physical distance for relaxation)
• Wait for relaxation / no dropping
• Verbal cue for start signal “Are you ready?”
• Approach and cue for mouth target to hand or syringe, and praise with “good boy”
• Cue to touch stationary target, mark with click
• Reinforce with low value food
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Step 4. Real Syringe & Duration
The dentist will be here In 2 days! I have to give the sedative 30-45 mins before she arrives, so I can’t afford to have any mishaps.
The SOS technique has been working well, so today I introduced the actual sedative syringe, sandwiched between using my hand and the empty practice syringe, to help with generalization. As this is a sedative that has to go under his tongue, I am also asking for more duration with the syringe in his mouth and pointed downwards..
Summary & Conclusion
Mazama had a strong aversion to accepting any kind of oral syringe. We worked gradually and progressively to associate the oral syringe with positive, feel-good emotions over the course of two weeks for 10-15 minutes each day.
On the day of the dental visit, I started an hour before they arrived to make sure I had enough time to recreate the set up we’d been using so it all felt very familiar for Maz.
I gave the sedative at liberty without any fuss, he was totally relaxed with no dropping. A wonderful testament to the power of preparation and connection training! He was sleepy in about 30 mins and the entire dental session was calm and relaxed.