Creative ways to administer pills other than pill pockets?

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hungphatads123

New member
Hello!

We have a three-year-old basset with a cancer diagnosis. He’s in the early stages of chemo and recently has become really picky about food and not wanting to take pills in particular. Not sure if it’s because of his prolific sniffer but he seems able to sniff out pills in almost anything we give him. One thing will work for a while, then he’ll turn his nose up at it. Hickory smoke pill pockets worked for a bit, sometimes cheese, sometimes lunch meat rolled up around it, but then usually he will seek out the pill and spit it out.

I considered crushing them up and then adding them to a mushy food, but since he’s become really picky about what food he will eat and I worry that if the flavor didn’t fully mask the flavor of the pill, he would just turn his nose up at it because he knows it’s pill-flavored. He isn’t very big on peanut butter so I haven’t tried much in that direction.

Just wondering if others have any creative solutions. I saw a pill shooter thing at the pet store that is like a way to just shoot them directly into your pet’s throat, and I’d like to avoid that if at all possible. But if people have experience with that, also happy to get your input. Right now we are giving him like 3 pills in the morning, and some of them are 1.5 pill doses so I have to get 5-6 pill portions into him each morning.
 
@hungphatads123 Depending on your pet’s comfort level, I would recommend training them to be pilled. It is a useful tool to have for when they don’t want to eat but need to take medicine.
1. Get them comfortable with your fingers in their mouth
2. Work on opening their mouth
3. Pop the pill in back as far as you can
4. Close their mouth and wait for them to swallow
Watch YouTube videos and talk to your vet staff to see if they can show you how to pill.
 
@parkerjwill to add to this, if they are stubborn and refuse to swallow, you can hold a treat in front of their nose. My dog always tries to lick the treat, which makes her swallow. There are also "pill guns" you can buy that help you place the pill in the back of the throat.
 
@hungphatads123 I used to put the pill inside a small piece of cheese, put that into a small glop of peanut butter, add a little tuna, and then put inside a small piece of bread. Sounds like a lot of effort but it wasn't bad.
 
@parkerjwill When you put the pill far back into the mouth, try to fit it in the little pocket just to the right or left of the back of the tongue.

Try not to touch the tongue otherwise you may make them gag.

Then close their mouth and life their head upward and give them a little chin rub. When they move their tongue/lick their lips then you know for sure they swallowed it.
 
@hungphatads123 We had to give our EPI dog a lot of medication that she hated. I finally started making my own pill pockets.

I found the best methods - check with your vet on this one first - was to make the pocket and then shove the entire thing in the freezer so she could have a frozen ‘treat’. We called the medication manufacturer and double checked that being in the freezer would not harm the medicine.

Pill pocket recipe -

Hunk (no joke a hunk) of cream cheese.
Peanut butter- add with your heart.
Tiny bit of Flour - I used coconut but you can use oat, wheat, regular or even peanut.

Mix the above until it forms a play dough like dough and form around the pills. Our girl liked more cream cheese some days and some days she liked a little sardine juice added in. She was dying. She got what she wanted.

Just mix it together, form the pocket and then I froze it. You can also stick it in the fridge.

There are no rules in pill pockets unless your dog has allergies.
 
@hungphatads123 Can you use appetite stimulants? They're a life saver for my senior sick dog.

My dogs do nosework and unfortunately it's backfired because they can sniff out pills in almost anything.

What works for us is turning hotdogs to mush in the food processor with a tiny bit of broth (this helps with the binding in the next step). We put down a layer of hot dog paste. Put the pill on top. Wash our hands to get the pill smell off. Put another layer of hot dog paste on top of the pill. Then without touching the pill we roll it into a little ball with the pill enveloped inside.

Then we freeze until it's pretty solid but not so solid they can't bite it (30 mins for us).

The freezing is important so they can't separate out the pill easily. The hot dogs cover the smell of the pill and the water blinds everything together when frozen.

Good luck!
 
@redeemed123 I’ve done Nosework classes with my big guy too and I didn’t think about the fact that I had been training him to sniff out specific odors. Obviously his nose runs the show but I’ve also been training him to follow it. lol. Thank you for the great tips. Will try the hot dogs!

Yes, we have appetite stimulants but they are also pills we need to get into him. We prioritize the prednisone and stuff he absolutely needs to get but maybe if we can find some good solutions we can get more pills into him.

He also seems less into food in the morning in general.
 
@hungphatads123 I 100% relate to what you're saying, currently struggling with it for my dog as well. Some days we just have to prioritize which medicine it is that he'll be getting. If he figures out something has medicine in it he won't touch it for a while because he's too suspicious.

Can you switch to a liquid appetite stimulant? I think they're easier to hide than the pills. I've found that my dog is more willing to take medicine without investigating too much the 2-3 hours after he gets an appetite stimulant dose. So I usually mix the appetite stimulant into a slurry paste of pureed hot dogs/chicken, and then time for him to get his most important medication after that.

I think getting some really stinky, high value dog/cat food can work too if the hot dogs don't work. Basically something he would never be able to eat otherwise, that can work to mask the smell of the pills.
 
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