Tell me about injected sedation for farrier visit please

[criso]

Another thing to consider if you can get someone reasonably local is to do the trims in 2 goes - 2 feet one day and 2 feet another so the whole thing doesn't get too overwhelming for her

Although it could get expensive initially, even do a little at a time to built up to doing a full trim. It's not like shoeing where you need to finish.

It will save money in the long run as you won't need the vet.

 

[Goldenstar]

I think when you are in this predicament it costs what it costs .
The horse must get its feet trimmed before the grass starts growing .
A several trip solution may well be needed and this could up costing a lot of money but it’s a welfare issue and it has to be done

its going to be very important that OP prioritises dealing the issue every day from now on she must work to get over the issue .
When I was young it was not unusual to get see young Irish horse who where arriving to go into hunting homes who had been in crushes ( like cattle ) or had been manhandled to get their feet done once for sale .
This could leave some having non of it when it came to foot handling .
It’s then a case of the lightly stuffed glove on a cane or a old broken shortened lunge whip to accustom the horse to thing touching them and just have to work on until the horse accepts it and relaxes the body .
It might takes weeks .
You can train reactive horses to get used to lifting their legs using a rope but does need a certain deftness with the rope this gets the leg up keeping you in a safe place .
You use the rope to get the horse to lift the foot and then release as as it picks the foot off the ground over time you get them standing with a foot up .

Hard Hats and gloves are a must for this work.

 

[SEL]

^^^ took me a year with the Appy before it was safe enough to let someone else near her hooves without IV sedation. By that time I could pick them out and run a rasp round them without getting kicked (& she meant her kicks). Even then I paid for a trimmer to do a double session with the promise that we could only rasp in foot picking out position - no nippers, no pulling legs back or forward.

Nowadays I hold a likit in front of the same horse and the farrier has her done in 10 mins.

 

[catembi]

I used likits for my stressy TB. I know that they're full of sugar, etc etc, but I didn't think 5-10 minutes of sugar rush every 6 weeks was going to kill him. After using likits for a few trims, he chilled out & doesn't need them now.

 

[sjdress]

I had to sedate my mare for years for the farrier, she had a real issue with it. Fine to pick out feet, stud holes etc but as soon as a farrier turned up on the yard she would be in the back of the stable snorting!
She would just have enough to make her sleepy so he could do his job. Vet should stay around, so can top up if needed. Sedalin never touched her but Domesedan worked well as well .
However after many years we started to reduce the amount she needed and now all I need is 4 packets of polos or a lickit! She still snorts her head off though when the farrier arrives!

 

[sport horse]

Get vet in to sedate horse. Then over time practice getting feet picked up and into the position that the farrier will require. Hopefully over several trims it will be possible to gradually give less and less sedation. Remember it is not your farrier's job to train your horse and nor should you put him in a dangersou situation.

 

[Goldenstar]

I use likits for the vet procedures if needed I think we possibly remove a leg from Sky if he had a likit.

 

[southerncomfort]

I had a similar situation, but mine is a Shetland. I wasn’t getting anywhere with training and hadn’t really put that much effort in if I’m honest. The farrier came last week and I just had a whole pocket full of treat nuts and fed them one after the other, holding on tightly so he had something else to think about. The farrier was able to trim his feet and he’ll now let me pick them out too. It’s like he just had to do it to realise it’s ok.

We deployed a naughty likit (with molasses) for the feral shetland earlier this week.

Not something I would let her anywhere near normally but worked extremely well as a distraction.

 

[SEL]

I use likits for the vet procedures if needed I think we possibly remove a leg from Sky if he had a likit.

Same with the Appy. She sees the farrier arrive now and I swear it's her favourite 10 minutes.

 

[LadyGascoyne]

I’d buy a rasp, don a hat and pick up feet two or three times a day to run the rasp around the edge lightly and tap on the foot a bit etc.

I’d distract with a likit or one of mine goes nuts for horselyx mint flavored lick.

If you can desensitize ahead of time then even if you still use sedation, you’re taking the edge off but not relying on sedatives to handle a full on panic response, which can be dangerous with an unsteady horse.

 

[Polos Mum]

Don't beat yourself up - asking for advice is a big step.

Lots of good suggestions on here. I have one who is very sensitive (he came from Ireland with shoes on - I can only imagine a cattle crush as they wouldn't waste money on IV sedation).
If someone has rushed / forced them in the past you have a lot of undoing to do - before you can actually start progressing - sadly.

A really fearful horse will fight even vet IV sedation - gelding colts it's surprising how many times one of mine had to be topped up before he'd drop (or maybe not surprising given what was going on!!)

Unless they are really terrible I would still try to do little and often rather than vet out and one big 'event' which might put you backwards in your training.

Talk to your farrier and see if he can call in on the way past to so 10 mins every few days (pay him for his time obviously) just the smell of them and the size of a stronger bloke can be off putting if they have had a bad experience. One of mine left a towel he's been using which stank - to practice the smell.
then progress to one foot a tiny bit
then another a tiny bit - and so on.

It'll be expensive - but all the options you have now are expensive so that's not really a consideration.

I would personally also buy a rasp and to 30 seconds on one foot each day - both practice and taking a touch off each time.

Experiment with what is the trigger - for mine it's being approached and picking his foot up. So i pick his foot up as normal and then the farrier walks behind me and I hand the foot in the air to him. Totally random but it works for mine - we only discovered this by trial and error - looking to find out what he was fearing.

 

[Pippity]

Blue used to need vet sedation for the farrier. The vet would be on site until the farrier was finished, because she'd initially need a top-up halfway through. It wasn't a great experience for anybody, but we'd tried with just domosedan and that was far worse, because she was still able to panic and rear at the farrier.

Gradually, she started to need less IV sedation, until my farrier was happy to try with domosedan, with the vet on site in case she needed IV after all. Once I took her barefoot, we were able to dispense with even the domosedan, and now the farrier can just trim her loose in her stable.

I've found that you have to give them the domosedan while they're calm, and before they've even started to get suspicious there's something strange happening. Once they're worked up, you might as well just give them water.

She was terrible with her legs in general, and I spent a long time working on that. The turning point was her being the demo horse for a clicker training clinic for my vet.

The IV sedation can't be a long-term solution - the expense and complication alone, never mind anything else! - but as a temporary way of getting the essential care, it worked for me.

 

[Fransurrey]

I took on my mare with long feet and was told that they hadn't been able to trim her as she was too nervous. I went down the clicker training, route. It's easier with someone there who knows what they're doing with the clicker. So, in your case, as you'd be the one handling for farrier, I would get her used to the idea of click = good girl/sweetie, then make sure YOU are the one at the head with the other person getting her to lift a hoof. Start small. If she so much as shifts the weight at the beginning, reward it. If you aren't conversant with CT, then invest in a session with a behaviourist. You'll only need one. Ben Hart for example has shaping plans including for picking up feet on his website (Hart's Horsemanship). I know of a couple of behaviourists in Cambridgeshire who might be able to help (they work in non-horsey spheres, but are well qualified).

Once you have feet up sorted, have the farrier pop by whenever you can (does he do others on the yard?). Even if it's to brush the hooves with the rasp, or pick up her feet and treat in passing. I pre-warned my farrier that he probably wouldn't be able to trim fully, but actually the CT was so effective done daily for just over a week that we both forgot on the day as she stood quite nicely (I didn't remind him and he only remembered after the last foot!).

I have been present at trimmings where the horse was i.v. sedated, and there were a nervous few minutes as he did turn out to be VERY sensitive to sedation and nearly went down more than once, so do be wary if you go this route.

You don't mention how she's been kept or if there's any pathology history with the feet. Is there a chance she could be in discomfort/have bad thrush/be struggling with arthritis, sidebone or ringbone? Using CT won't be meaningful if she's in any pain, in which case bute might be more effective, given a couple of days before and on the same morning.

 

[MiJodsR2BlinkinTite]

My little mare fights sedation tooth and nail. Fights it very badly and becomes dangerous whilst she's fighting.

She's barefoot but has been shod in the past. Wasn't all that easy to shoe when I had her and I had to work very hard to get her to pick up her feet when she was a youngster. She's mega-helpful now; all the hard work paid off!! Which is as well coz sedating her wouldn't be viable - tried it for her teeth. Had a young vet who frankly was as useless as a chocolate teapot: had obviously been taught that X-amount of sedative for X-sized horse is sufficient - and when it patently wasn't working she was bloomin' lucky to escape without her brains bashed out when Pony had decided she'd had enough. If vet had listened to me the Owner it would have been more helpful. We have an EDT now, much better.

Some horses however will practically drop down if you so much as show them a syringe: one of the other horses in the yard is an aged TB and he'll dose nicely on just a drop of the juice it seems. Whereas mine, even if she has enough to knock out a flippin' elephant, just gets aggressive on it.

 

[Tiddlypom]

I’ve successfully used the stuffed glove on a stick trick to accustom a horse to having its legs touched.

It took weeks to get to the point of being able to safely pick up and pick out all 4 feet, but get there we did. And from then to trimming.

The important thing as a handler was not to be driven to proceed to the ideal end result too quickly, but to be satisfied with small gains.

 

[criso]

Some horses however will practically drop down if you so much as show them a syringe: one of the other horses in the yard is an aged TB and he'll dose nicely on just a drop of the juice it seems. Whereas mine, even if she has enough to knock out a flippin' elephant, just gets aggressive on it.

My tb can be both. Vet has to give him much less than by the book otherwise he almost falls down. It's such a fine line that I insist on my regular vet who knows exactly how much to give.

But he still fights it. Vet is allowed to do his teeth but when he takes the gag out and tries to check the fronts with his hand, absolutely not allowed.

Used to use Domosedan but he'd appear totally out of it then suddenly react and box with his front legs which is especially dangerous for a dentist.

I know one that vet sedated for clipping, vet had given the max and topped up, came round enough briefly to accurately kick the clippers out of someone's hand with a back leg.

 

[criso]

In this case from what the OP has said, the horse has been trimmed in the past without sedation but is generally nervous.

So it seems it is worth trying someone else who is happy to spend time working with the owner to trim without sedation.

Some farriers are not the best for nervous horses. I know of horses that needed sedation for shoes but a change of farrier and they didn't need it.

 

[paddy555]

below is a post on this subject which came up on Warwick Schiller's Attuned horsemanship FB page today.

I've followed DL for a while both his FB and you tube videos. He trims loose horses so I enjoyed this post.




I’ve spent a great couple of days at a David Landreville- On the Vertical hoof trimming clinic. It’s all the things I love with horses, attunement, connection, consent, and emotional co regulation.
David trims all the horses at liberty and the first horse the first day was a gypsy vanner who came into the arena a little anxious and distracted. They turned him loose and he went to the end of the arena looking out over the fence and pacing up and down.David had us all stand around in a circle and focus on our breathing, and eventually we all sat down doing the same. Soon the horse came over and hung out with us and David went ahead and trimmed him at liberty.
Every horse David trimmed over the weekend communicated with him, he’d put a front foot down and the horse would change sides and present themselves for the other foot, or present themselves for a back feet.
It was so wonderful to watch, not only taking in David’s theories and process of hoof trimming, but how easy it is to do things with horses if you will center yourself, slow down , and listen.

 

[Fjord]

I thought I'd update. I was recommended a barefoot trimmer who was said to be very good with nervous horses, and she came today. Angel and I had both had calming cookies (I was so anxious!) and the trimmer really took time for Angel to be comfortable. Two hours later and she has tidy front feet! I've got some tips for working with the backs and the trimmer will be back for stage 2. I was so relieved I cried.

It was great to see how she worked and Angel soon accepted that it was OK to have her feet held and worked on. She had lots of treats, lots of breaks and stood calmly most of the time.

I feel so much more positive now! Thanks for all your posts, it gave me a lot to think about.

 

[Goldenstar]

Perfect .