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| Picture credit DogChannel.com |
Our friends at WebMD's Healthy Pets page have a newish article that every dog owner should read, "How to Give Medications to Dogs." Believe it or not, many people give up on their dogs because of this very issue (or so I have been told by several vets and vet assistants). In my case, I had a lot of problems in this area when it came to pills but, surprisingly, none at all when it came to injections. Tony hated pills of any kind, and I was hard pressed to find new ways to get them into him. His nose always told him when a pill was hiding in a bit of food, and the only solution was to put them in more and more exciting (i.e., normally forbidden) kinds of food. This went on for a while until I discussed it with his vet, who told me that he was not getting any time-delayed pills and so I could crush them and add them to his nightly tablespoon of nonfat plain yogurt. This worked great!
My brother Eric, who gave Tony to me, told me that I should have been sticking my fingers in Tony's mouth on a daily basis from the day he came to live with me in order to get him used to me doing that. Unfortunately, he told me this three years too late. By that time Tony had gotten pretty protective of his mouth, and even though his teeth were small, I was not eager enough to start putting my fingers in there. Eric's a behavioral psychologist, and he has been known to get animals to do some pretty weird stuff on command, so I'm sure he's right about the mouth thing, and I KNOW that putting the pills in the mouth is the very best way to do it, but I started too late and was too chicken for that method. My advice: it's the same as Eric's. When you get a new puppy, check its mouth out as often as possible. It will probably pay off down the line.
The one quibble I have with WebMD's advice on injections is that two different vets told me NOT to use alcohol on Tony's skin before giving him his twice-daily insulin shots. I really don't remember the reason they gave for this, but I do know that there was never a problem with his injection sites, no infections or even irritations. So, as always, go by what your vet says (and if you don't like what the vet says, get a second opinion-- you'd do that for your own health, wouldn't you?).
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