How I Give My Dogs a Daily Pill the No Fuss Way

Anyone who own's a dog will need to give it medication from time to time, but getting your faithful friend to take a pill can be a battle at times and leave you both stressed and exhausted. I live alone and have a huge German shepherd and a medium sized cross breed terrier. Until I found the "magic" solution to getting my dogs to take their daily medication, they would often spit the pill out and we'd have to go through the whole rigmarole again and again, leaving of us all exhausted and upset.

Both my dogs contracted Canine Leishmaniosis, caused by sandfly bites, and it's vital they have yearly blood tests and medication to control the incurable disease (along with a daily pill to help protect their kidneys).

Even if your dog is lucky enough to never suffer an illness, you will still be giving him or her worm treatments in pill form or as a liquid at roughly three monthly intervals. And, despite the manufacturers efforts to make these medications palatable to dogs, most will turn their noses up and refuse to take the medication without a fight. My dogs now take both medicine and pills easily using this "magic" solution. Read on to learn more.

Professionals will tell you that it's easy to administer pills to your dog, simply by squeezing both sides of his mouth so he opens his jaws, and then simply popping in the pill and keeping his jaws clamped shut until he swallows the pill down. Seriously... have you ever tried to do this on your own with a big feisty dog who wants nothing to do with being helped? I have and it didn't work. Why not?

1. Because my German shepherd has a large muzzle which is hard to get your hand around.
2. because he freaks out when being grabbed this way and squirms and pulls back so much I cannot keep hold of him.
3. He never swallows the pill which is then spat out as soon as I let go of his jaws.

Because both my dogs would sicken and die a horrible death without treatment I had to find a way to administer pills and medicine daily and with ease.

Mixing either in their food didn´t work, they would eat round the pill or medicine or accidentally eat it but then spit it out. Wrapping the pill in a nice tasty piece of ham or Chicken and hand feeding it to the dog had the same fate, the meat would be eaten and the pill spat out. I tried greasing pills with butter, no good. Then I tried hiding the pill in PATE and BINGO! It worked.

At last I had found the " magic" way to pill my dogs daily with no problem what so ever, what a relief for all of us.

Pate is easy to mold so a pill can be hidden right in the middle and even if the dog knows about it, and I´m sure mine do, the lure of a tasty hand fed treat overcomes the aversion to swallowing the pill and my dogs wolf both down with nary a problem.

I also used the Pate method to get my old dog to take his last leishmaniosis treatment which was Miltefosine in a thick gloppy syrup form. Mixing it in with his usual biscuits didn't work, he wouldn´t eat them, but squeezing the dose onto a piece of pate did the trick even though he could see and smell the medication.

Of course this method works for my dogs but might not work for yours, so just keep trying until you find something your dog will take even when hiding medication, there will be something he or she finds so irresistible you will be able to care for your dog without having to almost wrestle them to the ground in order to administer something they have to have in order to stay healthy.

Hi,

I am bac2basics or Anne. I have kept pet´s all my life, mostly rescued cat´s and abandoned dogs. Animals both tame and wild fascinate me and I love to watch their antics. Apart from writing about animals I also write hubs on cooking, gardening, psychic phenomena and health issues, you might also come across the odd poem.

When I first joined Hub pages I was thrilled to win 3 Hub pages awards, and be mentioned in a hub written by another hubber about her favorite writers. I was also blown away once when browsing Google analytic´s to see one of my hubs was being read from outer space by someone on the international space station. Strange but true.