fun with meds

As any pet owner can tell you, getting an animal to take a pill is absolutely no fun. I have a dog who unfortunately is an absolute "pill" when it comes to taking a pill.

Getting my dog to take pills is tricky business. Part of the problem is she's too smart for all the usual moves. Every time the vet tries to give her a pill, I smile knowingly. She's a stinker and knows almost every trick in the book. Wrapping it in bacon, hot dogs or cheese? Yeah right! She finds the pill every time and spits it out. As much as she normally gorges down her food and eats all sorts of inedible things, she's too experienced to take a pill hidden in food, no questions asked.

I don't like the idea of forcing it down her throat, a common way of dealing with this chore. I'd resort to this if it was a temporary, one-time thing, but for a daily pill regime, no way. Way too traumatic for her. If I did that, she'd be a wreck every time she heard the telltale sound of a pill bottle being opened, and I'd never be able to get her to sit still. Plus she's over 80 lbs so wrestling with her isn't practical.

The only thing that seems to work with her is crushing it up and mixing it into peanut butter. She loves peanut butter with an unholy passion, so I've taken to buying a jar of natural unsalted peanut butter just for this purpose. She also is rather fond of yogurt and other fermented dairy products like keffir.

Now that I've found her weakness, med time is no longer the teeth-pulling event that it used to be. In fact, she actually comes running when I open her pill bottle! If for some reason she missed that cue, the sound of the mortar and pestle always brings her in my directions. She actually looks forward to her daily "peanut butter treat". In fact, I've arranged matters so that "medicine time" is a reward for ear medicine time...