Season 9, Week 5...
My dog looked at me, cried out "Poison!", and projectile expectorated the pills out onto the floor.
Well, OK, she didn't actually say "Poison!" out loud (because if she did, I'd be a billionaire by now with my fabulous talking dog), but the end result was the same -- once again, her medicine was lying on the floor in a goobery mess rather than dissolving in her stomach where it should be. I'd tried all the usual things: Pill Pockets, crushing pills in her food, mixing it with other things, and more. Nothing really worked; she always knew. I usually had to resort to getting the pills in her mouth somehow and then just sort of holding her mouth shut until she swallowed, like the scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where they force him to drink the blood of Kali (only with less blood and more drool).
"You're not thinking like a dog," my husband said as he walked into the kitchen.
"And how is that, exactly?" I asked, sliding the pills up off the floor with an index card.
"Dogs don't give a crap about the thing you're giving them now," he said. "They only care about what you're going to give them next."
"And this relates to pill-swallowing... how?" I wondered.
"Here, let me do it," he said. "What are you trying to give her the pills with?"
I pointed to the package of bologna slices on the counter. Someone at Oscar Mayer was heading for early retirement from the amount of money I spent just trying to get the dog to take her pills twice a day. He picked up a slice of bologna and wrapped the pills up into a little lunch meat delivery system. Whatever, dude, I thought. That's exactly what I do with no success.
But he didn't stop there. He picked out another slice of bologna from the package and just held it by the edge, letting it droop down from his hand in all its preservative-laden glory. At this development, my dog was already doing the "OMG FOOOOOOD!" dance as she watched him.
He turned to her and showed her not the wrapped pills, but the whole slice of bologna instead. "Look, here -- what's this? You want this?" he said to her, letting her get close enough to sniff it to be sure it was all the turkey-beaks-and-lips glory she could possibly want. Her tail was wagging so hard by this time the cat was slowly being blown across the tile flooring.
He then slid the meat-wrapped pills in front of the slice and let her take that first. The instant she had it from his hand, he immediately followed it up with the full slice of meat, putting it right up to her nose and mouth. She swallowed the wrapped pills without even bothering to chew them because "OMGOMGIHAVETOGETTHATSLICENOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!!!" (to translate her look into words). The single slice went down the hatch and then she stood there looking at us with the "Is that it? Seriously? You disappoint me" look dog owners know so well.
"Holy shit, that was incredible!" I said. I had never had any pet take pills so easily.
"Yep," my husband said. "A dog gets so focused on the second slice, they just want to get the first thing out of the way as fast as possible to get to the follow-up treat." We joked a bit about finding a way to patent the system and get rich, though in reality I was just happy to have something that worked better than the Kali method of pill giving.
That was two years ago, and I still use this system every day to give my dog her pills. Give it a try if you've got a dog who gives you as much trouble with pills as my dog does. You won't be sorry. ;)
This is my entry for the fifth week of Season 9 of therealljidol. The prompt this week was the quote "Build a better mousetrap."
As always, thanks for reading. :)