The last time we had to feed Donna any pills was when she came down with the kennel cough. At that time the pills were really small and it was easy to just hide it in scoops of canned food and hand feed her to make sure the pill goes down her throat with her food.
This time for her being poisoned by a hydrangea leaf, we were issued bigger pill capsules as well as a bottle of syrup that smelled strongly of mint. Definitely not easy-peasy items to hide in scoops of canned food.
I had never really tried to pry Donna’s mouth opened before on my own. Like hello, dog newbie here! That looks like a lot of teeth.
But when I first found her with the bit of hydrangea leaf that she had spat on the floor, I just pried her mouth opened without overly thinking things. It was really not difficult, and she did not really give much of a struggle. And that really gave me confidence to just pry her mouth open and pop the larger pills in her mouth. (She wouldn’t eat it on her own if you just offer it to her like one would a treat, so…). But just prying her mouth open and popping it in doesn’t help because her highness will do that tongue flicking thing until she migrates it from the back of her tongue to the front or side of her tongue where she can conveniently flick it out onto the floor again. And all the while her posture will be screaming urghh, yuck! at you. And when she is done, you may be sure she will fill you in on her disapproval with a loud snort or two, hack maybe even three. Not that her displeasure counts, because I’ll still want those pills in her for her own good.
So nowadays, maybe it sounds a bit bad but I just stick a finger at the side of her mouth to pry it open, pop the pill in and hold her muzzle close very gently since she doesn’t even struggle and wait for her to swallow. And I do mean wait because that dog can hold that pill in her mouth and just sit still as a rock for however long it takes until the capsule dissolves and she decides to swallow rather than to continue have the mess of dissolved capsule and powder coating her tongue.
Oh yes, she can look unimpressed until the pill disappears down her throat and it is time for a treat. I treat her after each and every pill she swallows but I don’t think that has helped her to decide to swallow it faster to get at the treat faster. The good thing is she is not averse to pills and will sit there and calmly wait for you to pry her mouth open, versus the more compulsive panic she displays when you need to squirt stuff in her ears to clean them.
Do you have a better way to feed pills to a dog? I would love to hear since my achievement in that area is only to force it in and make her swallow.
