Dog Medication – Getting Your Dog to Take Her Pills

October 9th, 2010 |

Dogs can fall victim to a whole host of different health problems. For many of these problems, the veterinary industry has come up with a solution in the form of a medication. Remembering back to your childhood, you can probably find a time when you despised taking a medication and would fight as hard as you could to keep from taking it. Unfortunately, most dogs feel the same way about taking their medication.

How you do it largely depend on the type of medication that your dog needs.

Pills and Capsules

Pills and capsules can be some of the hardest forms of medication to get your dog to swallow. Many veterinary pharmaceutical companies will flavor their canine medicine like meat, liver, and the like, but these flavors are often far from true and many dogs will be able to tell the difference. The thinking behind that is that beef flavored pill taste better, unfortunately, this is usually not the case.

Many dog owners attempt to hide or disguise the pills in a dog’s food, perhaps covering the pill with peanut butter and putting it in the bowl with the other food. This has often yielded results, but some dogs will still find the pill and spit it out.

Another popular and useful way would be to wrap the pill up with ground beef into a little ball. By taking a small quantity of ground beef, squashing it flat, placing the pill in the middle and rolling the meat back over it, you create a delicious smelling and tasting little ball that your dog will not even need to taste. Sometimes, a dog will be able to sniff out the pill inside. In this case, the only option may be to hold your dogs mouth shut with a hand on top and on bottom of his muzzle. This will force him to swallow.

Liquid medicine

Medicines that must be given in an oral form can be just as difficult as pills. Usually a dog owner must measure out a very precise amount before attempting to squirt it into a dog’s mouth with the help of a syringe. This type of medicine can often be mixed with food, but again, a dog may recognize that their food has medicine in it. Liquid medication, unlike pills, cannot be spat out easily.

Injections

Most medicines that require an injection fall within the realm of your veterinarian’s job. For some of these medications, it might be necessary for you to bring him into the clinic to administer the injections. Some common injections can be administered yourself. These are usually known as subcutaneous injections, and are administered by lifting up the scruff of your dog’s neck and injecting the medicine just under the skin.

Sprays

Sprays are perhaps the easiest medicines to give to your dog. It’s easy enough to simply pull out the bottle and spray the medicine on the affected area. Most sprays tend to act very fast and get absorbed into the skin fairly quickly, however, knowing dogs, you still need to prevent him from licking the spray off. You may need to put a plastic cone around his head for a short while to keep him from licking.

Ear Drops

As a general rule, dogs hate ear drops. As a matter of fact, even humans hate that too. Seriously, who would enjoy the feeling of cold liquid running down their ear canal? Dogs are intelligent animals and will try to get out of your grasp once they know what you are trying to do. You can either straddle your dog from behind or get a family member to hold him down. Your dog will try to shake the drops out if you let him go right away, so hold him a moment longer and massage the ears a little bit.

About the Author

To train dogs not to beg at the table, never feed your dog from your plate as this encourages begging behavior. To find out more about canine health care and canine dog supplies, pay us a visit at CanineTouch.com.