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How To

How to Give Pets Oral Medication

Contributor
By eHow Contributing Writer
(21 Ratings)

A spoonful of sugar might be worth a shot in getting your pet to ingest a needed pill, but here's a more successful trick to help the medicine go down.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Instructions

Things You'll Need:

  • Dog Treats
  • Butter
  • Hot Dogs
  • Molasses
  • Peanut Butter
  • Butter
  • Cat Treats
  1. Step 1

    Give your pet a treat without medication to whet his or her appetite.

  2. Step 2

    Consider the following for dog treats: a bite-size portion of hot dog, cheese or peanut butter.

  3. Step 3

    Offer cats a clump of butter; give horses grain with molasses.

  4. Step 4

    Use the same treat to disguise the pill.

  5. Step 5

    Break the pill into small pieces if necessary, and wrap entirely inside the hot dog, cheese, peanut butter or clump of butter.

  6. Step 6

    Grind up the pill for horses, and add to the grain with plenty of molasses to hold the mix together.

  7. Step 7

    Be sure the treat is large enough to cover the pill or pieces of pill, but not so large that your pet will chew, discover the medicine and spit it out.

Who Can Help

Comments  

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rainmanmom said

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on 6/14/2009 5 stars all the way!
thanks!
rainmanmom

xina6 said

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on 3/10/2009 Encasing the pill in some margarine or butter has always worked well for me, with both cats or dogs.

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on 2/2/2007 Hope this info can help someone. I've had the hardest time getting pills into my cat and tried a variety of strategies. Just had perfect success using a cat piller for her last 3 pills and each time the pill went down on the first try!!! The cat was not upset like she would get when I tried to force the pill in her mouth. She used to spit the pill out about 5 times on each try. The cat piller has been a miracle for us and it only cost $3.

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on 1/30/2007 I had to give my pit bull big pills before, like; supplements and antibiotics, now that was a chore. I was also Prescribed a cat hairball remedy at one time, because my dog swallowed a piece of plastic, after I was done with the ordeal I figured out that the tuna tasting hairball remedy paste was a great pill coater in the meals I gave her in the coarse of the day. Many are about to ask, "Is it safe and why not use a pill pocket/treat wrap or crush it into the food?". All i have to say to that is been there tried it and for a pill taht size they will have to chew it to swallow it and forcing it down was not the best option, and to the other question no it will not hurt the dog at all, because the paste is just a sticky lubricant with very little medicinal values. So I'd say its a very inexpensive way to help with pill taking.

Boothy said

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on 1/15/2007 If a dog doesn't want it's tablet it won't have it's tablet even to the point of not eating it's meal, if this is where you've put it.
Open your dogs mouth by squeezing it's cheeks ( by doing this their cheeks are between their teeth and if they try to bite they are biting them selves) place the tablet as far back in their throat as you can, close mouth and massage down.

This works, i've used this method on the biggest mongrels of working dogs before.

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