She's terrified. Do you think you could habituate her to the process slowly? It will take some time but you could calm her, massage her, wait until she's relaxed, ears not pricked up but wide apart as when they are totally at ease, approach her matter of factly with the dropper without putting it anywhere near her ears or putting the drops in, say "Yes" in non-excited voice, lay the dropper aside, treat her, rub her chest very slowly and get up and walk away. Later, do it all again. And again. Don't actually even approach the ear for many repititions and when you do, just touch the dropper to the inside of the flap, say "Yes", lay dropper aside, treat, rub and leave. Just habituate her to this foreign object approaching her ears slowly and matter of factly and reward her with a positive result. Maybe eventually then you can get to the point where you can dose her without all of the fighting. It takes a while and a lot of real getting control of your own anxiety and fears about doing this. Don't feel bad that she hates this - you are trying to help her but she doesn't know it. But maybe just working slowly up to it will show her that she won't be kind of overtaken by all of this and momma is just going to work her up to accepting it at a nice slow pace and give her some time to trust that you won't hurt her, at least not any more than is necessary, as her ears are likely extremely tender and the meds or the massaging may hurt. I just hate having to wrestle a poor scared sick baby and stress them even more and as it worked for Tibbe when he was new and wild, maybe this type of thing will help you. Tibbe trusts me to do anything to him now so I know this can work for at least one once-wild Yorkie. I hope she gets well soon. |