mckenzievmd or an big pet owners,
don’t suppose you’d have any suggestions on how to get a 7month old 110ish lbs Newfoundland to take pills?
This goofy ass pup impaled it’s eyeball with a twig, heavy duty surgery in Albuquerque -
had to graph a plug and all for the eye ball. (Utterly amazing the stuff they can do these days)
Now it has week long regiment of 16 f’n pills spaced out over the day.
Just started the third day and the dog knows and hates the pills. I went over to help this morning, holding down this little bear.
It’s a neighbors, {not mine. lordie I’d never do something like that to myself, taking on that sort of animal, all the responsibilitie$,
than shit like this happens, $3000 surgery and that’s just the start of it.}
I feel super bad and wish I could help - have any suggestions?
Can the pills be crushed and squirted down the throat like with a baster?
signed
covered in slobber
35 views and no dog lovers brimming with good suggestions. :coolhmm:
Well, we’re going to try out my new mortar & pestle, powder 'em and
give the kitchen baster a try.
mckenzievmd or an big pet owners, don't suppose you'd have any suggestions on how to get a 7month old 110ish lbs Newfoundland to take pills? This goofy ass pup impaled it's eyeball with a twig, heavy duty surgery in Albuquerque - had to graph a plug and all for the eye ball. (Utterly amazing the stuff they can do these days) Now it has week long regiment of 16 f'n pills spaced out over the day. Just started the third day and the dog knows and hates the pills. I went over to help this morning, holding down this little bear. It's a neighbors, {not mine. lordie I'd never do something like that to myself, taking on that sort of animal, all the responsibilitie$, than shit like this happens, $3000 surgery and that's just the start of it.} I feel super bad and wish I could help - have any suggestions? Can the pills be crushed and squirted down the throat like with a baster? signed covered in slobberThey could ask the vet how it can be done. When I had a dog, a medium sized one, we used to chop up the pills or dissolve them in liquid and add them to his food. It worked for us. It sometimes helps to add something tasty to the food, too, such as canned gravy. When people decide to get such a big, hard to manage dog, they don't think of situations like this coming up. Lois
mckenzievmd or an big pet owners, don't suppose you'd have any suggestions on how to get a 7month old 110ish lbs Newfoundland to take pills? This goofy ass pup impaled it's eyeball with a twig, heavy duty surgery in Albuquerque - had to graph a plug and all for the eye ball. (Utterly amazing the stuff they can do these days) Now it has week long regiment of 16 f'n pills spaced out over the day. Just started the third day and the dog knows and hates the pills. I went over to help this morning, holding down this little bear. It's a neighbors, {not mine. lordie I'd never do something like that to myself, taking on that sort of animal, all the responsibilitie$, than shit like this happens, $3000 surgery and that's just the start of it.} I feel super bad and wish I could help - have any suggestions? Can the pills be crushed and squirted down the throat like with a baster? signed covered in slobberThey could ask the vet how it can be done. When I had a dog, a medium sized one, we used to chop up the pills or dissolve them in liquid and add them to his food. It worked for us. It sometimes helps to add something tasty to the food, too, such as canned gravy. When people decide to get such a big, hard to manage dog, they don't think of situations like this coming up. Lois Yes, we used to pulverize pills for our shepherd and mix it with a tasty soft food. Also (for big dogs), find a small coctail sausage (Vienna sausage) that the dog will swallow whole. Then stick the pill inside the saugage and feed it by hand, first a pure sausage, then a "doctored" sausage, it will never know what's inside. Suggestion, never let the dog see you are manipulating its food. It will immediately investigate what you did to it.
Yes, we used to pulverize pills for our shepherd and mix it with a tasty soft food. Also (for big dogs), find a small coctail sausage (Vienna sausage) that the dog will swallow whole. Then stick the pill inside the saugage and feed it by hand, first a pure sausage, then a "doctored" sausage, it will never know what's inside. Suggestion, never let the dog see you are manipulating its food. It will immediately investigate what you did to it.Vienna sausages. Genius!! :lol: Now if only we didn't live about 25 miles out of town. Still they are on the shopping list.
never let the dog see you are manipulating its food.But it's just a dumb puppy... :snake: {sarc} Very valuable advice, that one. Thanks W4U and L. I have an hour and a half before this evening's round.
Slice of bread, coat one side with peanut butter, put the pill on top of the peanut butter, roll the bread into a tube shape, and give the puppy his “treat.”
Several options, and of course not every one works for every dog. The easiest is disguising the pill in a bribe. Any high-value food can be used hot dogs, peanut butter, etc., though be careful not to get a peanut butter sweetened with xylitol, which is highly toxic to dogs). There are also commercial treats specifically designed for this purpose (e.g. Pill Pockets).
If that doesn’t work, some dogs can be manually pilled pretty easily. Have your one of your vet’s nurses show you the easiest way to open the dog’s mouth and place the pill behind the base of the tongue. For a big Newfie you’ll get slobbery, but if you get to be quick at it, it’s usually pretty easy.
Failing that, sometimes your vet can have the medicine compounded into a flavored chewable tablet or liquid for, though liquids often don’t work for big dogs because a large volume is required. And if none of this works, some medicines can be given at home as injections.
I do not recommend crushing pills or mixing them with food. Some medications become unstable or inactivated or are not absorbed properly if the original form is damaged, and usually they taste terrible so you are likely just to make your dog more resistant to the meds or even make them avoid their food.
I do not recommend crushing pills or mixing them with food. Some medications become unstable or inactivated or are not absorbed properly if the original form is damaged, and usually they taste terrible so you are likely just to make your dog more resistant to the meds or even make them avoid their food.Yipes, that's not good news. Did the pulverizing and water in baster. Didn't work quite as nifty this morning as it did yesterday but most of it went down - they do learn what's coming their way in a hurry. But I was still feeling pretty proud of myself. (shot down again) Jezz, the devil is in the details ain't it. Guess drug compounding is more complicated then I suspected, not that I've ever given it much thought. Trouble with wrapping it in food is that he's got that one figured out too, which led to going for the pulverizing liquefaction . Unfortunately the vet/surgeon is 4/5 hours away in Albuquerque. Good news, theoretically it's only for a week. I need to go to town later anyways, guess it's back to Vienna Sausage perhaps 'Pill Pockets' if I can find them. Thank you all for the bits of advice.
Years back our vet demonstrated a technique for giving pills that has always worked very well. It sounds a lot like the one Mckenzie described above. I found a YouTube video that shows how it’s done
Years back our vet demonstrated a technique for giving pills that has always worked very well. It sounds a lot like the one Mckenzie described above. I found a YouTube video that shows how it's done http://youtu.be/Bv7Y0LeANqYThanks good video, I have seen that pill method in action before, even had the vague memory but too busy with other things and it never quite solidified, until the video. Complication is we're talking four small pills and two biggish pills and a "puppy" that's over a hundred pounds. Tomorrow there's a call scheduled with the vet/surgeon, thanks for the warning, she's going to ask about it. It's one of those real life situations where best laid plans simply don't work and succeeding in getting a healthy portion of dosages down his throat is seen as a victory… with fingers crossed that it's not going to bite us in the end. I thinks that's something someone like Peacegirl doesn't get. We do the best we can with what we have, even if we know it's not as good as it should be. Life is Russian Roulette, something we get away with our short cuts, other times we don't =================== Ha just remembered some sausage patties in the freezer - OK tomorrow morning I'll try building some irresistible disgusting-pill-hidders {still haven't made that trip to town} :coolsmile:
It's one of those real life situations where best laid plans simply don't work and succeeding in getting a healthy portion of dosages down his throat is seen as a victory… with fingers crossed that it's not going to bite us in the end.This sort of ties into another leap of faith I made a long ago and it's been a personal truism since. Our bodies has the ability to extracting what it needs, and if it needs more of something than is available, it will figure out how to best stretch what it does have available… but then I'm no MD, I just inhabit this thing. :lol: Still, that perspective does inform my choices, and all things considered, against all odds, it's worked out OK for me.
McKenzie vmd,
Thanks for piping in and particularly that warning about the pulverizing.
This morning hiding pills in the sausage worked for the first pair.
Then tried the four little ones, unfortunately, those must taste like pure poison, because that was the end of that ruse.
So left with no alternative and no time, I went for shoving it down his throat, well to the base of his tongue, then slamming the mouth shut to many kind words of encouragement and neck stroking to get him to swallow the beast. Of course, can’t have it easy, there’s third f’n pill, fortunately only one of those… and my whole fist disappears past my wrist in his maw, and this is a 8 month old pup, jeez.
Since I already had broken skin on both hands, I figured enough of that.
I pulverized the last one, and back to shoving the baster down the poor dudes throat, talk about slobber flying.
This evening, it was time for the Vienna Sausages to step into the limelight.
Gave him a couple to warm him up, he loved them and wanted more,
I went into the house and away from Mishka to load the pills.
2
1
4
First two biggies, first one he took, second one he spit out and rejected the pill while munching the rest.
I shoved the ejected pill in with the next one and we decides to try for the base of the tongue method,
in the wrist disappears, fingers feel for sweet spot, inserts, withdraws,
slamming dog’s maw closed, followed by much stroking to please and swallow.
Guess, familiarity breeds, well familiarity. It worked pretty good.
The last four little monsters were split between two VS halves for two ‘insertions’ and both ‘insertions’ went OK, as far as it goes.
Good thing I was a wrestler and still have some strength, there was a lot of physical persuading involved,
and team work fortunately the owner has her timing down pretty good so we got that working for us.
No fresh blood this time either, and after his initial pout, he came back to me for some lov’n, so I’m feeling pretty good about it,
now that I have washed hands, face and a new shirt on. 
I’m sure McKenzie knows what he’s talking about but we tried giving our dog his uncrushed medicine down his throat and after 15 minutes or more of struggling with a strongly resistant dog, who practically killed both of us, we finally got it down. We were completely disheveled and exhausted. Minutes later, after we let him go, he deliberately threw it up. We decided at that moment that we would crush it up in his food because he would at least get most of it in his system whereas he got nothing by the “conventional” system. And we all lived to tell the tale. Our dog lived to nearly 20, even with crushed medicine.
Lois
Yesterday he went for his check up. Surgeon complimented us on a job well done. No signs of infection, healing proceeding well and he thinks eyesight will be OK. He agreed that some pills should not be pulverized and our’s were OK. Still now that we’ve got the down the throat thing down . . .
Heck, now he just flops down with jaws clinched and plays possum. Hardly any wrestling anymore. I’ve also figured out that going to the back of his teeth there’s a gap to shove the finger, then fingers, in and he can’t resist opening up, quick shot to the base of tongue, by now he’s more lively and sitting, sort of, at least throat pointed up hill, with muzzle held shut, lots of stroking, love and nice words. It was over within seconds this morning. It sure helps that he’s off the four little hideous tasting ones that he resisted with every fiber of his self-preservation instinct.
I can’t be there this evening so will suggest powder in food (Her hubby works on the oil patch and it’s his two weeks out so he got to miss all the “fun”.) - might be a good evolution since the remaining pills seem to be palatable.
Why can’t they flavor pet medicine? If the pills tasted like bacon, you’d never have a problem giving them to dogs. They flavor children’s medicine, why not pet medicine?
Why can't they flavor pet medicine? If the pills tasted like bacon, you'd never have a problem giving them to dogs. They flavor children's medicine, why not pet medicine?You think I haven't asked myself that many times over. :lol: But, now we got the method down. To hell with the sausage, dip the pill into cold bacon grease, hit the back of the throat and it's done. Nothing for the nearly prehensile tongue to grab at to work out. Still a slobbery job, but barely traumatic anymore. Though he still clinches like a son of gun, good thing he's still a pup, at a hundred plus pounds, I still can't wrap my head around that.