Medication Tricks (or, How to Fool Maggie)

Maggie Mae has seasonal allergies. She has a runny nose and goopy eyes and tends to reverse sneeze quite a bit. Most of the time, she is OK without medication, but when I woke up the other morning and found half of my pillow soaking wet from doggie snot, I realized that something had to be done!

So, Miss Mags gets her medicine once a day. It took a few days to figure out how to give it to her. Here is what didn't work

1. Hiding the pill in cheese, meat or treats.
2. Feeding it to her in her food bowl with her dinner.
3. Plopping yogurt on it and expecting her to miss it.

Here is what did work:

1. Grinding up the pill and mixing it with yogurt and then adding the entire concoction to her food. At first, she didn't like it. Now, she eats it all. Thankfully, no more doggie snot.

I think I must add a pill to each food bowl at dinnertime! Each dog has his/her own needs - it is for this exact reason that everyone now has their own crates (and, my dining room has no space):

• Ella gets a pink thyroid pill at dinner.
• Duchess gets a green thyroid pill at breakfast and dinner.
• Blackie get a Rimadyl at dinner.
• Robbie gets either a DGP pill or Rimadyl at dinner.
• Maggie gets an allergy pill at dinner.
• Bear gets a digestive support pill at dinner. (We are going to try Honest Kitchen's Perfect Form soon, though).
• Spirit doesn't need any pills.

A coworker once asked me how I kept track of it all. It isn't hard to remember what each dog gets. What is hard is when I forget the order I put the pills in the bowls and I have to figure out what is in them!