Taking Pills

Every morning I have to give my dog Desy three pills.  One is for a thyroid condition, one is phenobarbitol to keep her from getting really excited and bringing on a seizure, and the third is an allergy pill. She has severe allergies, none of them food, all of them things like dust, grass, pollens, household inhalents. (She's a high maintenance dog!) These pills are all very tiny and I  tuck them into a bite of banana and she takes it without any problem.

Today I decided that it's time to start the heart worm medication.  I picked it up for them a few weeks ago but decided to wait till the warmer weather to get it started.  Today is the day.

Last year the heart worm medication was a chewable tab that looked and tasted (I assume, I didn't taste it) like a treat. Both dogs took it eagerly.  This year it's a huge, round, beige pill, and hard as a rock.  I seriously doubted that the dogs would think it was appetizing.  I gave Desy hers first because Desy eats most everything. She spit it out!  I wasn't surprised.

I tucked the pill into some banana and she took it. She worked at eating it and though she spit out part of it at first, she did end up getting the pill swallowed.  Rusty, however, doesn't like banana.  I decided to get a really big gob of peanut butter and surround the pill in peanut butter for him.  I thought he might get the peanut butter off the pill and spit the pill out, but I was grateful to see that he downed the pill eagerly and was ready to lick my fingers clean again.

Now I know, next month when it's time for these huge pills again, I'll just reach for the jar of peanut butter to start with.

Posted by: NJ on 4/21/2004 6:30:01 AM , 3 comments