Quick Tip Of The Day: How To Give Your Dog Medicine

lexi
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 12:56 pm: [report]

Chunky peanut butter works best because they don’t know if it’s the pill or a nut they are eating.  Just be careful because they start to figure it out after a while.

Laughing cow cheese works well too.

Taurwen
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 12:56 pm: [report]

Good trick but I’ve met a bunch of dogs who were very skilled in eating whatever pills were hidden in then spitting out the pills undamaged.

msu.umich
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 01:03 pm: [report]

Lord bless you Amelia.  I’ve had my cats’ glands drained before, and I’m pretty sure that’s what Evil smells like.

joyy
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 01:05 pm: [report]

Depending on the meds, your vet might even ok grinding the pill or opening the capsule so you can stir it into other food undetected.

Poor Lucca though!  How about a picture of her instead of an iStock one?

mce
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 01:07 pm: [report]

Some dogs are allergic to peanut butter.  Please be careful.

esmee
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 01:12 pm: [report]

you can also visit a compounding pharmacy and get any medicine made into a flavored liquid.

Amelia McDonell-Parry
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 01:13 pm: [report]

@mce AGREED, thank you! Guys, always important to know what your dog’s allergies are!

thehighandlow
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 01:15 pm: [report]

O.M.G. My little dog, Parker had the EXACT same thing happen to her TWICE this past year. She even kinda looks like the stock photo you posted! Ain’t nothin’ like caring for your little darling with stitches in her butt and a drainage tube, let alone having to give her pills as well.

My trick? I get soft treats like Canine Carryouts (which are like 2 bucks a bag at Target- yay) and stuff a pill per treat in em. If the pills are huge tablets, i cut em in half and stuff each half into a separate treat. Large capsule pills? I tear the treat in half and mold it around the pill. Stuff is like playdoh consistency. But yeah, cheese works too!

Hope your little Lucca feels better!!!!!

Chebs
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 01:23 pm: [report]

My family’s Newfoundland would get his pills wrapped in american cheese slices, until he wised up and somehow managed to get the cheese off the pill and spit it out in less than 20 seconds.  Eventually, my parents just started getting pills that could be ground up into his wet food at night.  The mastiff we have now still falls for the pill in the cheese trick though.  We always did the cheese thing so we could toss it to them, because both the Newfie and the mastiff loved cheese so much that they’d get antsy and accidentally nip fingers to try and eat it faster.

Jenn27549
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 01:32 pm: [report]

They make some treats now with a pocket specifically for feeding dogs/cats pills.  They have them at my vet’s office and big pet stores like PetSmart and Petco or whatever.

Lynn
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 02:08 pm: [report]

My dog just licks peanut butter and never licks hard enough to get a pill, but I just put the pill in a piece of bread and make bread ball. I put some peanut butter in there too if I feel like it, but she eats the pills even just with bread!

lemniskate67
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 02:26 pm: [report]

I wrapped up a pill in a piece of bologna to give it to my basset hound.  The pill fell out and she ate the bologna… and then licked the pill and ate it too. I never had to fool her or hide one again.  Act like it’s a treat - I mean, it can’t hurt.

BlueVibe
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 02:30 pm: [report]

There are these things called Pill Pockets, which are basically meat-flavored gel.  You’re supposed to put one pill or capsule per pocket, but you can pinch off pieces of gel and use one pocket for lots of pills, since they’re expensive. 

These things literally saved my dog’s life when she recently got hit with three serious ailments in a row and was taking handfuls of pills twice a day: She wasn’t eating well, didn’t want most treats (no peanut butter, no cream cheese, no butter, no chicken), and had learned to check for pills in everything else we tried to feed her.  Pilling her was turning into a huge, stressful, fight.  I used to be a vet tech, too, so it’s not like I haven’t had practice!

I usually pill her with little scraps of bread squished around the pill, which she takes just fine when she’s feeling well.  She wouldn’t touch bread when she was sick, but she’d eat little bits of Pill Pocket.  (Chicken flavor worked better.  Beef is strong-smelling and looks like ear wax, which made *me* gag a bit.)

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Our other trick is to have two treats in yours hands: One with a pill and one without.  Get the dog to focus on the treat WITHOUT the pill.  Hand him the pill treat and then chase it quickly with the non-pill one, so he swallows the pill treat too quickly to chew it and find the medicine.

Christinaval
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 03:42 pm: [report]

DUDE! Put the pill in a hot dog weenie! It works! I don’t have the heart to give my dog peanut butter because she tries to get it off the roof of her mouth for like an hour!

lewomack
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 04:38 pm: [report]

This is applicable to dogs who aren’t crafty enough to hide it in the side of their mouths.

nikkialli
wrote on October 19 2009 @ 10:11 pm: [report]

Also, be careful because some medicines should not be given with dairy (I know one used for Lymes can’t be). We give our dogs little peanut butter sandwiches with the pill in it, or wrapped up in cheese or a cold cut. I just watch them after to make sure they don’t spit it out.

VsegdaOdna
wrote on October 20 2009 @ 07:38 am: [report]

Im with Lewomack. My dog hates PB and know how to extract even the smallest pills from food and spit them out shortly afterwards. How do I get make sure she ingests it? I make sure I have a good hold on her, basically pin her down, tip her head back, drop it down the back of her throat, hold her mouth shut with one hand and rub my knuckles along the under part of her mouth and throat. It causes a knee-jerk like reaction to swallow. May not be the nicest way, but it’s the most effective and I know she definitely has ingested the pill.

Penelope09
wrote on October 20 2009 @ 08:15 am: [report]

We wrapped them in salami and called it the “medicine treat,” which my dog Roxy used to take nightly. Of course, we had two dogs, and it wouldn’t be fair to give only one of them salami, so Rosy got a medicine treat as well, without any medicine. After Roxy died, we got another dog, Lilah, but Rosy still expected her medicine-less medicine treat nightly. And then, of course, Lilah did as well. So, the dogs still get a medicine treat every night without any medicine.