:lol  :lol  Well, that doesn't sound very feminine, but neither does chasing two Greyhounds with an electric Dremel attached to a 50 ft. extension cord.  :lol  :lol  :lol

Seriously, the discussion was about pill "resistors," the dogs that manage to take the treats and spit out the pills and capsules.  I've been through life-threatening illnesses with Greyhounds, and there is not the luxury of hit and miss.  Also, I take no chances since I have more than one dog.  What if one spat out the pill and the other ate it?  Thus, the GHLady Straddle.  Wait a minute.  Name that after somebody else.  I'm sure I didn't invent it.  :lol  :lol  :lol        

i guess i'd try the cream cheese or american cheeze or even liverwurst trick first. hide the pill inside, but first try a few big no pill treats, so that he'll stop chewing them so suspiciously.

or open the gelcap and mix the powder into liverwurst, or ground beef? again, try a few "blanks" first to get him swallowing them reflexively without testing them for suspicious objects!

Thankfully, the only pills we have to give here are the regular worming tabs.  Most of our doglets will take them in a ball of cheese or a ball of meat or a spoonful of pate (with blanks always given first).  Buddy the Lurcher is a *bleeeep* when it comes to tablet taking so we have to use a combination of the GH Lady Straddle, the Bev Head Lock and the blob of butter or margarine  We put the pill in her mouth, add a blob of butter - which WILL melt whether Buddy likes it or not - and then she HAS to swallow  ;)   Sometimes it works first time, and sometimes we have to have a few goes.

Having given lots of medicine around here, my best suggestion is:

Go to the store and get a can of Pedigree--the kind that comes in pieces of meat (chicken with rice, eg).  The chunks hold pills VERY nicely, and everyone around here loves them.  I give a couple "empty" pieces first, followed by the trick pill piece. :b  Should cost you about fifty-five cents for a can, and it'll stay fresh for three to five days.

I've also had great success recently with little scraps of bread spread with PB and then folded around the pill.

OTOH, they do make a pill-shooter device that many cat owners have used with great success.  I've never heard of anyone using it for a dog, but I don't know why you couldn't.  It's a sort of syringe-like thingy with a plunger--you pop the pill in, slip it into the animal's mouth, and hit the button.  The pill apparently vanishes down the throat before anyone is any the wiser. :b

I agree with Tam and others:
little ball o'cheese!!!!!

Hi!  Not a dog owner yet, but I had to pill my cat for the first time this morning.  I used the pry-open the mouth with one hand while holding the head with the other.  It did work, but what surprised me was she got on my lap voluntarily later this morning.  I figured she'd never come near me again!  

Good luck! :0

Thanks, everyone!  Since we don't eat meat, I didn't have anything like ground beef or hot dogs around, and the only cheese I had was a wedge of parmesan . . . not terribly enticing.  So I tried GHLady's straddling trick, and it worked!  Before I was trying to get it really far back and was doing the jaw clamped, throat-stroking thing, but I don't think I was getting the right angle to get it really far back.  The straddling helped that.  Before he was also giving me "fake" swallows--now I know what a "real" swallow looks like.  :)

Sigh . . . I wish they made all doggie medicine like Heartguard--it's so easy to give!

Thriller likes peanut butter, and Mabel likes cream cheese.  Works like a charm!  

For the pill resistors, I straddle the dog, pull the head back, pry open the mouth, stuff the pill down, and hold the head back until they swallow, stroking the throat.  Heap on the praise, and give a treat.  I've had to give meds too many times to be delicate about it.  It sounds worse than it is, and only takes a minute.  Zip zap, it's done.  :lol  

Yes, I would make sure he gets all of his medication.  That was a pretty serious episode.  

There's an easy way to pill a greyhound, but I'm not sure if I can explain it clearly...you know, the old picture is worth a thousand words.

Hold the pill between your thumb and forefinger - open the mouth with the other hand. Go in from the SIDE of the mouth and push the pill down the SIDE of the throat with your thumb.

If that doesn't make enough sense  :p
you can use cheese, lunchmeat, dog food - follow the bite with the pill immediately with a second bite - they are so interested in what's coming next that they miss the pill. At least that's the theory. LOL.

Ann

My principal at school swears that pilling dogs is the reason they invented cheese in a can. My boys could never resist, no matter how big that dang pill was. I usually use the cheese foldover or the cream cheese bomb

I just had a foster that was on antibiotics and had no previous experience with pill-giving.  I used hot dogs.  I took one hot dog and sliced into 1/2 in slices, cut the pill in half and guided each piece of pill into a slice of hot dog.  Of course I had to give hot dog pieces to my two also -- they weren't about to let the foster get an awesome treat like a hot dog while they just watched and salivated!!!!!

Guess I have been lucky    With Roca, all I do is toss his thyroid pill in with his food. Mr Chowhound eats it right up :rasberry  :rasberry

Maybe you could use something like this:http://www.arcatapet.com/item.cfm?cat=6115

We use hotdogs sometimes because the texture is good for holding the pill in. Most of the time I pill directly by opening the mouth and pushing the pill into the opening to the throat. they have no choice but to swallow if you get it into the right spot. I pill my Standard twice a day and he is a chunky monkey and the hot dogs were NOT helping!  :lol

"The GHLady Straddle"  :lol  

Shadow can smell a pill in anything--and I mean anything!  He gets at least eight pills a day and I use the slide it down the side  method.  It's a pain

All the others take pills in anything, including bread!

Diane

  Kiowa recently had an episode that required him taking 3 pills a day. It got tiresome trying to sneak them to him with treats or in his food every time. But he loooves to catch his treats in mid-air and he's really good at it. So I tossed him a treat or two and then tossed a pill and he would gulp it down before he knew what happened. Of course then he would get another treat. I don't know if this will work for you, but Kiowa did fine with this method.

 :lol GHLady!  :lol

I wish that Casino would take pills in food, but he finds them EVERY SINGLE TIME and spits them out. Or, he won't touch the food at all if he thinks I put a pill in it. :angry  I still can't believe he managed to find half a Baytril pill in a bowl full of kibble and canned food, eat everything else and spit the half out on the floor.

Wrapping up the pill in a piece of cheese slice has worked for Tori.  I "mold" a strip of American cheese around the pill by warming it in my hand and making sure all the edges are sealed, so it's really just a little ball of cheese with the pill in the middle.  Tori likes cheese so well she just inhales it, pill and all.  If it isn't sealed up good, she manages to spit the pill out, though.  then I start all over with another strip of cheese. Sometimes she ends up getting a nice sized cheese treat due to it taking several attempts.  

I just drop those Brewers Yeast pills into her kibble and she doesn't even know she's eating them, but I don't think they have much taste.

Good luck with your babies!

Tam

With Kaya on antibiotics and Paco on antibiotics and painkiller, there's a lot of pill-giving in this house.  Fortunately, with Kaya we can just stick it in peanut butter and she'll swallow it.  But Paco is another story.  With PB he'll separate out the pill and spit it out.  If we try opening his mouth, dropping it in the back, and pointing his jaw up, grasping the muzzle, he sometimes swallows it but has also been somehow crushing the pill and getting powder everywhere.  The powder mostly stays in his mouth but I know that's valuable medicine going to waste.  So I guess I have two questions:

1) Any other ways to pill a dog?

2) How concerned should I be that every bit of medicine isn't getting into him.

He's on a somewhat rigorous antibiotic schedule--500 mg of Cephalexin three times a day.  They are the gelatin capsule type if that makes a difference.   I was also planning on asking the vet tomorrow when we're there.  :)

I think pet stores sell treats especially to give pills in.  I guess they are little pockets or something.

Flash and Kirby take pills right from my hand without any camouflage at all.  Zoe gets her pills via the GHLady straddle and it's always worked.  Jesse gets hers in a piece of cheese, plus she's the only one who won't take her Interceptor even though they're flavored.  

For Casino we use the pill shooter when we can. For the most recent bout with the Baytril we used "butter bombs". Coat the pill in a little butter or margerine before tilting he head a little, prying open the jaw and pushing down the side/back of the throat. They are so slick that there is slim to no chance of them being able to spit it out if you get it far enough back. As long as the pills are buttered I have never had to straddle the dog.

Another method is a piece of chicken hot dog -- stick the capsule in and down the hatch it goes.