How to administer eye medication

[piebaldrider]

I don't know if any of you have any clever suggestions that might help me.

My horse has a carcinoma in his eye and we have found a fantastic drug that may cure it however it has to be administered directly into the eye.

My horse strongly objects to this and is now quite upset if i even try to get near his eye and throws his head and swings his quarters at me.

I have tried drops but i cant get near enough to get them in, i have had a gel that you can put in with your finger and now i'm trying a spray but i can't get it in.

I am supposed to get it in 3 times a day and i doubt it's going in once. Any ideas would be very gratefully accepted.
My alternative treatment would be an operation to remove the eyelid but my insurance company E & L won't pay for the op so i really need to try to get this other treatment in his eye.

[LMS]

I've just recently read an article on administering eye meds. Some suggestions were to:

Wash the eye area with a clean rag & pat it dry, apparently that helps some horses.

You can administer a *freezing* med to numb the eye before putting in the drops or ointment.

For drops, if you can to pull back/away the lower eyelid to make like a cup (pinch it & pull away from eye). Hope that one made sense, I'm not great at explaining things.

Have one hand go under the cheek piece to secure your hand. (Never tried that one before)

Good luck

[nutkin]

We have a horse at the yard who suffers with reccurrent uveitis.He has also got wise to having drops put in his eyes and reacts the same way.We always ensure 2 people handle him,one to do the drops and the other to hold him.We use a natural twitch which is basically the person holding the horse holds on to the upper lip and twists it.This has the effect of stopping the horse from throwing his weight around and enables the other person to get the drops in quickly.It doesn't do any harm to the horse.we also do him outside of the stable as he managed to squash 2 people a while ago when doing the drops.This was before using the twitch method and it is now far safer than it was to do him.

[Wally]

Andrew Pants is stupid about his eyes.

But he's small enough to grapple with and tell him what's what.

I'm afraid you might have to resort to a 5 second twitch!

[Bebe]

My mare had a serious case of conjunctivitis not long after I got her and had to have cream administered to both eyes twice a day for quite some time. She's a trusting soul so wasn't too bad but there was a definite knack to it.

I found that it worked best to use clicker training. I clicker trained her to lower her head, then to allow me to wrap one arm around her head (under her jaw and back up over her poll). This hand had the ointment in and also provided some restraint. Then I got her to accept me using my free hand to lower her bottom eyelid, at which point I blobbed the ointment into the corner and then let her blink.

I rewarded her for each stage, working on it initially without the ointment and then as she got better with it. It took a while but eventually I could adminster the ointment quickly and easily without even having to put a headcollar on her.

[LMS]

Oh yes, they also mentioned using a twitch like others here said.

[piebaldrider]

Thank you all so muchi was feeling so desperate when i wrote the question it was 3.20 am and i couldn't sleep for thinking about it.

It's so important to get this stuff in to prevent the tumour from growing so i will definitly try the twitch and i will upadate when i have somthing to tell you.

[piebaldrider]

I have never tried clicker training but have read lots about it so i am going to read up a bit more and give it a go.

[Bebe]

It's definitely worth a try, you could always use the twitch in the short-term whilst you work on the rest but I've always found it's easier in the long run to get them to accept things without restraint. Obviously it depends on how long you're going to be doing things for as to whether it's worth it or not though.

If all else fails I've always found a big bucket of feed to be quite good as a distraction!