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Looking for new ways to hide dog’s medicine

Glad she’s feeling better with her meds ! You’re lucky to have one another !

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Thank you! She has even put on a little weight! She looked like a skeleton at the beginning of summer. She is 15 years old and is a large mix breed, mostly shepherd.

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And ? her name please ?
very good about her weight gain !

Liverwurst is a good option if PB doesn’t work. Honestly it’s nasty to handle (imo) but I’ve known several dogs who only ate pills with that.
Two other options I’ve heard/used:
If your pet is food motivated but picky about what’s in it make a line of treats. Put one down, when they go for it put another, then another so they don’t spend time chewing they just swallow and go for the next.
And if chewing and spitting out is a problem add in crushed pretzels. Crunchy but not a pill and might be enough to train them that all hard things hidden in a treat aren’t pills.

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Good idea!

Maxine is her name. (My husband named her) I call her Max for short

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Nice ! Give Max an extra peanut butter spoon for me !

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I will!

Another vote for liverwurst, such as braunschweiger.

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Bacon or bacon grease, liver spread, any food they go stupid for instead of just happy with it. You can also crush or cut the pill into smaller pieces, makes it harder for them to eat/chew around the pill and spitting it out.

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Bacon and bacon grease is one of the things I add to her healthy, recommended by the vet, dry food that she hates. If I add the bacon or some kind of gravy mixture she will eat it. She also likes eggs and boneless chicken too.

All these are great ideas. However, sometimes dogs, with their incredible noses, start refusing everything. That’s when I pull up on their upper jaw, deposit the pill quickly as far back as I can, and then give the piece of cheese as a reward.

We have a three year old cat on gabapentin twice per day for the rest of his life, thanks to a lousy vet. I stuff it down his throat. He’s very good about it now. They get used to it.

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one thing that makes a difference to our guys is we give treat with out meds treat with out meds treat with meds treat with out meds. and alternate if it is 2 with out 1 with 1 with out. or 1 without 1 with and 2 without.

Get them excited and kind of “snatchy” for the treats also helps.

Brydon

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For the last few years of my old dawg’s life, he too had to have many pills 2x per day. He was quite old (16-19 in the end), with questionable vision and hearing…but his nose and taste buds worked way too well!

My go-to had always been peanut butter sandwiches, the peanut butter being the glue for his meds. Not a whole sandwich all at once, more like a 1/4-1/2, torn into bite size pieces. He’d get a plain piece followed by a bit with a pill. He figured that out quickly when the number of pills increased dramatically and he bit into one. After that, he swore off peanut butter sandwiches. I found warm, plain cheeseburgers to work as a solid replacement, warm gooey cheese as the glue. Again, no more than 1/2 at a time, torn into pieces, some with meds and some without. But I also had to switch things up or he’d get bored, and at points he needed probably 10 pills per day. Now, he was ancient and what I found to work the best 99.9% of the time, my vet didn’t love….fishy flavored, fancy feast paté cat food, pop the top, poke the pills in and then flip it over onto a plate. There was no outward pill aroma and he would gobble it up so fast that he never knew he was taking his meds.

Pill pockets were great as long as they didn’t have pills in them. I tried marshmallows, he apparently didn’t have that kind of sweet tooth…but he’d steal candy and hunt chocolate as if he was a blood hound and not a lhasapoo! (And, no I didn’t let him have chocolate) Anything that wasn’t sort of sticky, like cheese, lunch meat etc, I’d find pills on the floor. My sister’s dogs love cream cheese, my old guy said “nope”, turned his nose straight up and trotted off.

Good luck to you and your lucky dawg!

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Thank you for the suggestions! My girl takes 4 different kinds of meds a day. Her current trick is to carry her “treat” to a hiding spot and tear it apart to get the pills out and eat the rest. Sneaky little girl!

@Barn_Mom, your post made me smile and picture this adorable senior dog debating if it was worth it today to eat what you were offering knowing that one of the bites was going to just not taste as good as the others.

Cat food/treats are very stinky so I think they are a good idea.

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liverwurst.

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Everyone has good ideas on the tasty snacks. What I have done with my dog who hates her heartworm pill (has to be quartered for her) is give her an unmedicated bite of the treat, then a medicated treat followed by an unmedicated treat, rinse and repeat until meds are swallowed. I know it is more calories in but it has worked for my dog.

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Pill Pockets are great, if obnoxiously expensive. I like to rotate flavors for my pickier dog to keep it effective.

Plain old peanut butter (xylitol free and low sodium) works really well for a lot of dogs too. You can hide bits of kibble or treats in with the pill so that surprise texture doesn’t become a giveaway.

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My old girl got most of her pills in chunks of turkey hotdogs. (but you can use anything) Warming the meat before can increase the smell and desirability (don’t heat the pills!) The trick was to get her to eat quickly. One pill per slice and it is treat time! She is excited over treats. Ask for a sit and quickly give her a no pill slice. ask for her paw, quickly give her a one pill slice. Keep going until all pills eaten. Eventually we got to the point where I could put a couple of the tiny pills into one slice and she still gulped it down. I was prepared to add no pill slices in if she got suspicious, but she never did.

When she was on a larger antibiotic pill, I put it directly into the back of her mouth and held her until she swallowed (then she got a treat)

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