My Pill Giving Skills Seem to be Deteriorating

I have lost my touch. First, I forgot Eunice's cheese chunk to hide her half and pill in. I figure I can use the gray from her dinner, no problem. Problem, she just licked that pill clean and returned it to me - twice. So I had to resort to the traditional method: get the dog to open their mouth by pushing their lips down over their teeth. That didn't work that well with Eunice and I barely got her mouth open. Once the pill is in the dogs mouth, you have to hold their mouth shut until you see their tongue poke out - that means they have swallowed. Eunice is a very patient dog, she out waited me twice before I finally got the pill down.

I will never forget Eunice's cheese chunk again.

Then there is Henry. He did good for the first three days. He and Lucinda would eat their vitamins right out of my hand and Henry would lick up his pain pill from my fingers. On the fourth day, he decided that he didn't want the pill, so he knocked it to the ground and let Lucinda eat it. Fortunately, my dog takes the same pill so I could replace those doses.

I try a new approach. Henry eats so fast, I will just drop it into his breakfast. That worked for two days until I noticed he wolfed down breakfast but left one piece of kibble. Hey, that was not kibble, that was his pill. He obviously doesn't need it for eye sight or sense of smell.

I thought I would have to resort to holding his mouth, but I tried putting the little pill on top of the vitamin tablet and he ate them together. Thankfully he went home before I had to come up with another way to get him to take his pills.


For my own dogs, I used to use cheese, but I found that peanut butter works better. Every morning one of my dogs has to have 2 pills. I put PB on a knife and she licks it clean. I did used a spoon, but you have to wait much longer to get a clean spoon back than a clean knife. I get a second knife and give my other dog a PB treat, just to be fair. We have been doing this every morning for months now and yet every morning the second dog looks that peanut butter over very throughly to make sure I am not trying to slip a pill in on her.