Giving Pills to Dogs the Easier Way

I feed my dogs several pills every night. I toss a fish oil capsule to Atlas, who happily chomps down and squishes it so it squirts in his mouth.  Phoebe takes hers carefully over to the carpet, bites into it to make sure it isn't toxic, and finally eats it while creating a greasy mess on my carpet.  We've had this routine for more than a year.  She does the same thing. Every. Single. Time.

(This is a cute and pointless video of my Giant Schnauzers catching and eating grape tomatoes)

  

Once, on a whim I tried the same technique to give Atlas a capsule filled with glucosamine and chondroitin powder.  I tossed him his fish oil, which he greedily bit into, and then I tossed him the glucosamine capsule. He eagerly chomped down on it, only to have this horrible-tasting powder fill his mouth.  I feel badly that I did that, but the expression on his face as he tried to spit out the powder was priceless.  For a visual, picture a kid trying to scrape something nasty off  his tongue!

Recently I had to start giving Phoebe some Proin for her urinary incontinence issues.  This particular brand of PPA is in a chewable (beef-flavored?) tablet, and initially I had no trouble feeding it to her before her meal. After a couple of days, though, she decided it didn't taste good enough and she spit it out.

Ahhh, the dreaded spit-out!  Time to come up with a new plan of action.

Fortunately, both my dogs love peanut butter.  No one in my house is allergic to it.  But if peanut butter isn't your thing, you might try cream cheese instead.  Whatever you choose, give your dog a small glob of it to make sure the dog likes it before you try to put pills inside!  Then, take either the edge of a spoon or your finger, get a glob (maybe 1/2 teaspoon or so) of peanut butter, and push the pill inside it.  Make sure the pill is coated on all sides.  Yes, your fingers will get messy.  Push the glob from the spoon onto your finger, and feed it to the dog.   The next part is important, to make sure the dog doesn't spit out the pill.  Let the dog either lick the spoon, or your finger, after he has eaten the pill.

I also have several varieties of non-peanut butter, like Wow Butter ("Tastes Just like Peanut Butter!" the label says) and Sunflower seed butter.  I didn't care for the Wow Butter, so one day I tried popping a fish pill into the Wow Butter and feeding it to Atlas.  Atlas, who eats everything, spit it out!  Apparently it does not taste just like peanut butter even to dogs.  I haven't yet tried the Sunflower seed butter with the dogs.