Ugh...my dog won't take her antibiotics!

[Tobias]

Poor girl has been sick off and on. had antibiotics twice a day and it’s getting harder to give them to her.

She is a pig. Loves food! or anything that is slightly edible! Will inhale EVERYTHING!!! but now it’s hard to give her her pills.

Any tricks?

ever since she got sick (had an infection behind her eye, which caused her jaw to hurt resulting in lots of pain eating, chewing, or opening her mouth) she hasn’t been eating the same, she has slowed down, we were giving her canned food until her jaw felt better. now back to the dry food. Jaw feeling better.

Then she stopped eating her food. Both dogs did, strange. They would eat other things that we gave them (rice, carrots, treats etc) but not the food. So we bought them new food (think that old food got contaminated somehow) and they are both eating again. But she will.not.take.pills.

Giving her pills used to be so easy! Because she inhaled everything! Pill Pals! Yup, peanut butter, Yup! but now those won’t work. she keeps spitting it back out.

My sister works at the vet and will be able to take care of it, but she is pet sitting and won’t be home tonight, that leaves me to give the pills.

I think this is more of a rant now…I just want her to feel better again.

[Horsegal984]

Cream cheese. Liverwurst. That canned easy cheese crap. All awesome.

[shakeytails]

I don’t bother trying to hide pills if they won’t take them easily. I just stick them in the back of their throat where they have no choice but to swallow. I’ve gotten a pinched finger a time or two, but nothing bad enough that I felt more than a minute or two later.

[threedogpack]

get a pet piller

http://www.amazon.com/Jorgensen-Pet-Piller/dp/B0002YFRMU

or teach her to catch food tossed to her then:

toss:

food
food
food
pill
food

[Tobias]

[QUOTE=shakeytails;6392926]
I don’t bother trying to hide pills if they won’t take them easily. I just stick them in the back of their throat where they have no choice but to swallow. I’ve gotten a pinched finger a time or two, but nothing bad enough that I felt more than a minute or two later.[/QUOTE]

Tried that.

she used to just swallow everything, so food toss would be easy, but now shes chewing everything! I almost wonder if her jaw still might be bothering her because she chews so slowly and carefully.

I will ask my sister if she wants to take her in to see the vet again.

The other day she ate something that she dug up…vomited it up in her kennel, then ate it again!!! (before we had a chance to stop her) all we saw was something green and feared that it might be rat poison (not knowing if neighbors put something out) so we induced vomiting until we got it back out, it was a small piece of fabric…why she wanted to eat it again I have no clue…it was after that she stopped eating her food. We thought it was just an upset stomach from the vomiting/fabric but when the other dog stopped eating as well, that’s when we changed it.

Could she be afraid to be eat so swiftly now because of the fabric? do they remember like that?

[Canaqua]

I shove pills down throats if they won’t take them easily too…open mouth, put pill on waaaay back of tongue, just after it starts to curve down into the throat so they can’t work it into their cheek, hold mouth closed, then rub throat to induce a swallow. Holding the mouth closed and waiting for the swallow will prevent them from chewing the pill. Our ACD mix can be pretty tough, but even she will eventually have to swallow, you can see the defeated look in her eyes when she does ;).

If her jaw hurts again, so forcing her mouth open wouldn’t work, maybe ask your vet if there is something you can give through a sub-q injection? It is soooo much easier than pilling dogs and cats.

[Guin]

My dog has gotten to the point where he’ll spit out cream cheese and peanut butter, but if I wrap his pills in a piece of deli turkey, he’ll snarf them right down. I think maybe with the cream cheese/peanut butter, he must have bitten down into a pill one time and it was so bitter, he doesn’t trust them any more. The turkey is apparently more acceptable.

The liverwurst idea is also a good one.

[Bacardi1]

My “go to” for many years now has always been Braunschweiger liverwurst. This is the soft kind that isn’t sliced - comes in a hunk or “chub” as they call it. Have yet to have even the sickest dog turn down a lump of that with a pill mushed inside.

I have it on hand all the time now since one of my dogs is on thyroid meds & most likely will be for the rest of her life.

[SkipChange]

I use a dab of vanilla icing, which is basically just sugar. My dog loves it.

[FlashGordon]

Open jaw (carefully if she is still sore)
Drop pill in… way back in her throat
Close jaw
Hold shut
Blow quick in face

Pill goes down.

Works every time. Just be gentle and calm about it.

[quarterhorse4me]

My father-in-law is a vet. If he is doing the force method with one of mine he puts butter on the pill first. It makes it a little more slippery so that it is harder for the dog to work it back up with his tongue.

[Wayside]

My picky Collie would eat a pill wrapped in cheese or bread, but the trick was to actually have three treats. Plain cheese first, cheese with pill second, and then plain cheese. Usually he’d get a good taste of the first treat so he was eager to have the next one, and then he’d be so excited about the third one that he wouldn’t pay much attention to the contents of the second one, and just snarf it in to make room for the next treat.

Now my cat is an expert pill spitter, and I have to use the force method, and hold him for a looooong time before he’ll swallow anything, but eventually it will go down.

[Tobias]

Thanks everyone. I will some more of these methods today with her morning dose.

[2ndyrgal]

Cheeseball, really

Our Corgi figured out the 3 treat game pretty quick and spit the pill out. But cheeseball? It’s kind of sticky, so it worked really, really well, every time.

Man I miss him.

[Tobias]

Well I tried the 3 treat trick with the pill wrapped in some lunch meat. She inhaled every piece except for the one with the pill, she spit out. so I wrapped it again, handed it to her, and help her mouth shut until she swallowed it all! lol. it worked! VICTORY!!! I WIN!!! for today :-/

[2ndyrgal]

You know that’s only gonna work once, right?

I’m telling you, soft, mushy cheeseball.

Especially if your dog is smart.

[Tobias]

[QUOTE=2ndyrgal;6393451]
I’m telling you, soft, mushy cheeseball.

Especially if your dog is smart.[/QUOTE]

I will try that tonight. I will even give her some of my delicious Havarti cheese, that is expensive, because that’s all we have, lol.

[Kwill]

I have a dog that will not take a pill with treats, period. He gets very suspicious and won’t eat anything. So, I open mouth, insert pill, make sure he swallows it, then we do ball throw and chase which he loves. He even knows the pill bottle, and sits down for his pill to get it over with. He is very ok with this method, but try to fool him with food, forget it! My other two you can give the largest pill with food, they don’t care.

[norcalammie]

Have a dog who has to have 4 capsules twice a day. Found that the very very thinly sliced deli meat that comes in the packages works the very best. Take a piece or even half a piece of the meat and wrap it around the capsule. I can find the packages of deli meat in the discounted section at Safeway as close to the expiration date for half price. So I get a pound of very thinly sliced turkey for something like $3 and that lasts me almost 2 weeks. He comes and sits waiting for his pills now and he formerly ran outside as soon as I opened that cupboard door! Get the super thinly sliced meat as does not tear like regular deli meat when you wrap it around the pill. Give that a try.

[sunridge1]

All dogs are different about food and some dogs lose there appetite completely when taking antibiotics so NO food will entice them. I have one of those and she’s had Lyme 3 times.

After trying everything under sun I had to force the pill down her throat just like quarterhorse4me said with butter. At first it was difficult and she fought me (GSD) on the one hand the long muzzle was a boon on the other the power behind that muzzle sucked. Eventually she too came to sit down in front of me and wait.

Today, she’s an old dog and get Previcox twice a day. She takes it politely from my hand AS long as it has butter on it, plain, no dice.