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Vetting Love: Giving Your Horse an Intramuscular Injection        At the age of eight I've injected a frog, ..with water. At the age of 9 I've injected a scorpion's tale, ..with air. They were both dead. The difference between giving an injection to a dead creature and a (very much) alive one is vast, I'm only too sensible of the fact that my horse weighs nearly half a ton, and for that, I didn't want to take any chances of my attempt going wrong. Like everything else I develop curiosity for, my first reaction is to google it. I found a couple of information sources that were quite useful, and was relieved when I read that Intramuscular Injections are relatively simple and the process is not so complicated. To confirm that, I called one of the vets I had grown accustomed to over the past few weeks. The steps were pretty straight forward, and he didn't see anything going wrong, but thought it would be a good idea to come over and 'administer' my attempt. So, back to the title of this post, How to Give a Horse an Intramuscular Injection? 1. Visualize a triangle on the neck of your horse that overlays the muscle (see illustration below) and find the center of the triagle  2. Clean the area thoroughly with sanitizing alcohol solution 3. Pull the skin/coat of your horse from the base of the triangle to stretch it fully (in order to avoid your horse moving it while injecting, and therefore preventing movement of the needle during the injection) 4. Make sure you use a thin needle for the injection (I used 21-guage, green top). Insert the needle slowly 5. Attach the syringe holding the medication, and pull (suck out) to check if the needle is correctly inserted in the muscle and not on a vein. If you see any blood while pulling, remove the needle and repeat a few centimeters away from original spot. Remember, you want this injection in the muscle, some medications are fatal when injected in veins. If no blood comes out, inject the contents of the syringe light-handedly 6. Remove the needle slowly when done. If the medication you're using requires repetition, make sure to alternate sides on the horse's neck. Right, and left. Injecting on the same spot repeatedly may result in bruising. Now that I put the steps above in writing, it does sound slightly more complex than it actually is, and to be honest, I don't know where I got the courage to do it, but if I were to take a guess I'd say love breeds courage, I genuinely believe that I could give IB more love than any other vet, and wouldn't want to leave him under the 'standard care' of anyone. Now, please don't ask where I got the needles to inject a frog and a scorpion when I was a child, or even why I was mingling with such filth in the first place -- that's a story with blackmail potential. Meanwhile, I've been MIA since the start of this holy month. I've missed blogging, & I've missed all of you, but it takes me time to adapt to the new clock (I'm the worst when it comes to time-lags) but alas, I think I'm doing better this week => I wish you all a blissful month x Lots of ♥ coming your way Labels: Pony Tales $6 in my moola box | link | email this post |
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