dive into mark

1. Take a quarter slice of American cheese.

   

2. Roll the cheese into a ball and insert the pills.

   

3. Feed the cheese ball to your dog.

   

I’m told that peanut butter also works, but it’s messier.

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Nineteen comments here (latest comments)

1. It’s true that peanut butter works and my daughters think it is hilarious to watch the dog work on the peanut butter that gets caught on the roof of the dogs mouth

   Sam D

   — Sam D 

2. I usually just open his mouth and shove the pills in. He can smell pills wrapped in food and always manages to eat around the pill, so I gave up and just go with the direct route. Its amazing what you can do with a 100 pound german shepherd after you’ve established dominance! :)

   — dssstrkl 

3. The first trojan to attack dogs was a pill inserted into a horse. That’s where the term horse pill comes from.

   — kwgoodman 

4. I guess we’re lucky. If I tell the dog it is a treat or candy, she dances around the kitchen, the sits and waits for the medicine.

   — Jim Correia 

5. We’re in the same boat as Jim. Our dog was on pain meds for her bum knee and her daily squirt from the syringe was the best treat ever.

   — Peter 

6. I’ve found that a small piece of lunch meat or a dollop of yogurt to work very nicely.

   — Jonathan Rascher 

7. s/that//

   — Jonathan Rascher 

8. *Does not work with cats.

   — Susan 

9. With cats, wear oven gloves, tube down throat, blow pill down, follow with a triangle of Dairylea.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairylea_%28cheese%29

   — Bobby 

10. @ dssstrkl

    My dog was the same way. You could take the smallest pill, wrap it up in anything she loves, and get her all hyped up to eat it. Then after she seemed to have chomped down everything she would spit out the pill - with not a scratch on it.
    So it was the direct route for our queensland healer also.

    — Ryan 

11. Not sure how well it works for dogs, but Pill Pockets work well for my cats: http://www.greenies.com/en_US/Products/DogPillPockets.aspx

    Obviously, if something cheaper, like a slice of cheese, works, then by all means…

    — Stephen Duncan Jr 

12. A solution to the dog spitting the pill out is to give them another piece of cheese as soon as the first is in their mouth. In their hurry to get the second piece, they generally gulp the first one down entirely.

    — rob 

13. I used to use bread balls to feed medication to my dog. After a while, he managed to separate the pill from the bread. So we switched to banana. And it worked for the rest of his life.

    — Luiz Rocha 

14. Baloney! Really, baloney works pretty well too.

    — Harold 

15. Cats are evil. Some tablets taste OK and are small enough to be snuck into treats with a skewer, but for others the only way I’ve found that avoids the dreaded ‘claw down the side of a fingernail’ agony is to crush the tablet, mix with melted butter, then – and here’s the trick – smear it on the cat’s front leg. This presents a quandary: the icky pill taste (butter helps a little) vs. the compulsion to clean. Cleaning always wins out, or at least has in my cat’s case, though the look on her face while she licks it off is priceless!

    — Stef 

16. My cat George is obviously not a real cat at all, as he calmly allows me to lie him on his back, open his mouth and drop a pill in, then hold his mouth closed and massage his throat until he swallows. I’ve given him loads of pills like this and he’s only scratched me a couple times.

    It’s all a matter of whether your cat trusts you or not. If they don’t trust you, it’s time to get out the oven gloves, I think. If they do trust you, they’ll allow you to do almost anything within reason.

    — Matt 

17. Our dog is an expert at separating a pill out from any food you might mix it with. But folding a pill into a piece of bread with peanut butter seems to do the trick. I think it’s a combination of the stickiness, plus the sweet tastes helps mask the medicine.

    If we ever have to give our cat medications again, I might try some of these suggestions. Last time, we just had to wrap his body and legs up in an old towel, shove the pill in his mouth, then hold his jaw shut, and try to keep him still without getting shredded until he swallowed. Fortunately, he really didn’t try to fight us *too* badly.

    — Dougal Campbell 

18. Matt: I think the primary difference is not so much trust vs. not as it is tabby vs. tomcat – though I guess trust plays a role.

    — Aristotle Pagaltzis 

19. This technique does not work for my cats. It did a few times, but they wised up.

    — Jim Scarborough 

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