Want to know how to get a dog to take medicine? Getting a dog to take medicine is not always easy.
My dog is a picky eater and very smart, so it’s a challenge to feed him medicine. He has allergies and occasionally needs to take medicines when he scratches too much.
Here’s a list of how to get a dog to take medicine based on ease from a simple solutions to hard core pill spitters (like Kobi).
Very Easy: Hide the medicine in your dog’s food. If your dog eats all of it and the medicine, congratulations your dog is super easy to give medicines too!
Tip: it’s easier to hide medicines in wet food.
Easy: Wrap the pill in something your dog loves, give it to your dog and down it goes. There are endless variations on these method of wrapping or coating the medicine in:
- cheese
- peanut butter
- bacon
- lunch meat
- hotdogs
- Pill Pockets
- freezing the wrapped pill
Wrapping tablets in bacon worked for with my dog, but it doesn’t work for him if I have to give him a capsule.
Medium / Hard: Put the pill in the back of your dog‘s mouth. Close their mouth and hold their mouth shut and your dog swallows the pill. Then give a dog treat to your dog after they swallow the pill.
Extra tip: put a bit of soft cheese around the pill, then put it in the back of your dog‘s mouth. Close their mouth and hold their snout shut and with your other hand stroke their neck – stroking the neck triggers the dog to swallow.
Hard: My dog is an expert pill spitter. If he notices a pill in his food, he will spit it out.
Now, I use a pestle to grind up the hard pills. If they are in capsules, I open them up. Check with the vet if this is ok for the meds the dog is taking.
Then I put the pill powder in my dog’s wet dog food. Add some extra treats in the dog food to make sure it’s extra yummy (e.g. small bits of chicken, tuna, cheese, bacon, or other favorite treats).
The “extra yummy” bits need to be small enough so your dog can’t sort them out from the rest of the food. This has been my fool proof way go get my dog to take his medicine.
Never give your pet any medicine unless it’s subscribed and / or approved by your vet. Also, ask your vet for the preferred way to give your dog medicine
