Graduation and the Jerk Horse

My new beautiful bracelet

I graduated from law school today.  It was a whirlwind couple of days.  We had a grad dinner last night just for the faculty of law, and then we had our graduation bright and early this morning.  Needless to say, there were quite a few surly law students this morning after staying out late at night drinking!  I can now say that I have a Juris Doctor, which is just a fancy way of saying I have a law degree.  And I get to add more initials after my name.


My parents and godmother came to the ceremony, and my parents got me a few lovely gifts.  First of all, they donated to Walker's College Fund, and I'm pretty excited (and not just because I have to pay for Walker's new boots!).  They got me one of the bracelets I mentioned in an earlier post, this bracelet from Pinklette, and they also spoiled me with this lovely necklace that I have been lusting over for a very long time.  For those of you who aren't famaliar with Pyrrha, it's a company based out of Vancouver who use old wax seals to create bronze or silver cast talismans.  I also have my initial, and I think they're so unique.

Onto the jerk horse.  He is, well, a jerk.  Now that he is out of the woods, I don't have to feel bad about being impatient and unimpressed with his behaviour.  He is giving me a HORRIBLE time with his bute and other medicine.  This horse will let you do just about anything to him, including give him an injection in the hind end without a halter on to hold him with.  But he will NOT let me give him his bute in an oral syringe.

It is starting to get worse and almost to the point of dangerous.  Once I get the syringe in his mouth, I'm good, but you have to get to his mouth first.  He throws his head in the air, and he almost broke my nose the other day whipping it up so fast.  It literally took me an hour today to give him his bute, and since the other medicine is not necessary (I bought it to see if I could help with his neck), I didn't even bother.

Does anyone have any tips for how to administer oral syringes to untrusting and jerkface ponies?  Unfortunately, because he's still lame, I can't lunge him or discipline him in that way because I risk him hurting himself.  I tried to make him move his feet as much as possible in his stall when he wouldn't listen, but I realized it was just adding stress to his hooves instead of letting them heal up.  I tried to be assertive with him, making him back up or giving a snap on the leadline, and I tried being super sweet, letting him smell the syringe, rubbing him all over with it, not forcing it on him.  Neither worked.  I pretty much just sneak attacked him like I did yesterday, and I didn't end up getting all of it in anyway.

For the record, he has no qualms about the actual medicine.  I mean, I'm sure he doesn't love it, but it's apple flavoured and he would lick it off my hands.  I can always put it in his grain, but I want to make sure he gets it all.  Besides, I don't want to avoid the situation just because he doesn't like it or else he's never going to learn.