How to Give a Pill to a Dog

Dogs have a very acute sense of smell. As a result, giving a pill to a dog can be a messy business, with soggy pills littering your home. Some folks suggest stuffing the pill at the back of the dog's mouth. Others suggest stuffing the pill in a hot dog, or keeping the pill with food your dog likes until the food smell overpowers the medicine smell of the pill. This will succeed most times, but requires a great deal of advanced preparation and can be costly and messy. The following is a simple, neat, clean and inexpensive way to give a pill to a dog. Your dog is sure to swallow the pill, and be eager for more.

Things You'll Need

• Kitchen knife
• Bread butter
• Pill
• Dog

Instructions

1. Before calling the dog over, take a piece of bread the size of a quarter dollar coin and put the pill on top of the bread. If you need to give the dog more than one pill, you can place several pills on the bread as long as they don't hang over the edges of the bread.

2. With the knife, spread a moderately thick layer of butter over the pill(s). The butter should completely cover the pill(s) so only bread and butter are showing. By completely covering the pill(s) you prevent the dog from smelling or seeing the pill(s). If you have no butter you can use margarine instead.

3. Call the dog to you.

4. Showing the buttered bread, instruct the dog to sit. The dog doesn't know there's a pill in there and regards the buttered bread as a treat. Dog psychologists say that if you give a treat to a dog without requiring the dog to do something to earn it, the dog gets confused.

5. Feed the pill-laden "treat" to the dog and watch it disappear down the hatch. The dog will most likely be very eager for more of the same.

Tips & Warnings

• Butter is said to be healthy for the dog's fur, which provides an added benefit. In addition, bread and butter are much cheaper than other foods people use to give pills to dogs, such as hot dogs or cream cheese. If you hold the treat from the bread side, your hands should stay nice and clean.

• Make sure the piece of bread is not too large for the dog to swallow whole. Smaller breeds may require a nickel-sized piece of bread. Your object is to avoid the dog chewing the treat and finding the hidden pill(s).

• You should only feed the buttered bread to the dog from your hand if the dog is trained enough not to bite you as you feed it. Otherwise you may need to set the bread on the floor and then let the dog eat it. This latter method is not as sure to work as the dog may not swallow the treat whole.