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Pill Pupper

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Our fourteen year old dog came home from the vet last week with a pharmacy – a collection of pills and ointments to treat a recurring skin condition and a recently acquired limp. As the resident canine pill and injection nurse, I’m the one charged with slipping needles under furry skin and pushing mammoth capsules past slobbery tongues. Lucky me!

Dog_pills

Good thing the dog doesn’t realize I’m clumsy with needles. Sharp objects give me the creeps, and I get a little shaky and short of breath when I’m trying to hold the dog steady to find a proper spot for the injection. If the needle nurse at your doctors office reacted this way you’d switch clinics. I’m sure it won’t be long before I give myself a shot instead. Pill stuffing is something I’m better at – I’m not likely to miss there and my hands and fingers just happen to be a size that is dog-throat friendly. But this can be a messy, drooly business.

Some pills go down easily if I act like the medicine is actually a treat. I’m convinced dogs read faces and body language, and there is an expression I use when I’m about to hand over something tasty and fun. I smile, lift my eyebrows and hold the pill close to my chest like it’s a treasure. Then, with a quick, generous sweep forward I bestow the pill on her as a delicious prize. Small pills are gone in an instant. Large pills, however, come back out almost immediately.

Ptoooie!

Then the game is on. I have to pick the pill up off the floor and quickly re-insert it before she turns and leaves the room. It is crucial to be both speedy and watchful, because there is a serious downside to administering oral medication to the wrong end of the dog. This goes on as many times as is necessary until she swallows, usually with a gulp, and always with a look of dismay and betrayal.

How well do you take your medicine?

69 thoughts on “Pill Pupper”

  1. sorry to hear about the dog dale. its a hard time in the circle when the dog knows its getting the attention form you and is not crazy about it. i remember the pills that are spit out and the urgency to get them back ibn before the now wet gelatin coating melts and starts leaking into your hand. good for you on the shots. a lot of people find those tricky. i hada cat who needed to be fed through a tube in her side for the last bit of her life. it is amazing what we will do for a loved one.
    i am not great about taking medicine. i havent needed to take any pills or shots for a long time but i do get prescribed things like exercise and dietary reform that i nod and vow to get better at and fail miserably in the enactment of. i started doing luminosity recently and find the brain exercise about the right amount of a workout for me. sit ups jogging eliptical weight lifting all sound good but are difficult for me to get into the groove with. i need to though it only gets harder and i sh=ure enjoy feeling good physically. thanks for the pep talk coach. i going in there. a couple sit ups then work it up to a regimented program. here i go bye now.

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  2. Good morning. As a person who has a good start on his “retirement years” i have had the good luck to avoid the need for pills and shots. That’s good because I would not be good at taking my medicine. I would have go immediately to one of those pill boxes that has a compartment for each day of the week. I’ve used one of those boxes on one occasion when I needed to take some pills and I can even mess up on taking my pills using that system. Is the pill box empty because I took all of the pills or did I forget to fill it?

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  3. Rise and Swallow Baboons!

    Most of my meds are allergy medications. All else are the “lifestyle choice supplements”–the fish oils, the joint and bone health meds, the Vitamin D to promote calcium absorbtion. To remember to take them, I have to set them up weekly, then put them where I see them. After that, I’m good.

    Dale, you know about Pill Pockets from the pet store? Wrap the pill in a soft treat and down it goes. Since one of my dogs is the queen of doggie allergies, she gets one of these daily and loves the “treat.” Big pills have to be crushed and put into a tablespoon of canned dogfood, though. If it does not fit in a pocket it lands on the floor. In the words of our Dear Leader, “Ptooey,”

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      1. The pill pockets are the handiest things known to canines and less messy.
        Dogs love’em. I love’em Everyone is happy and there is no messy PB.

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  4. I’m good with small pills, but large ones cause me to gag. Just the thought of it is enough to set me off. Fortunately my blood pressure meds are two tiny pills. My body doesn’t absorb vitamin B12 from oral supplements, so I have to get a monthly shot. My friend, Helen, administers that, and it’s no problem for either of us as she’s a good shooter. Not sure I’d do so well if I had to rely on Dale to give it. The rest of the supplements I’m supposed to take, I take erratically. Either I forget or the pills are too large; my calcium supplement is large enough to gag a horse.

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  5. OT – At yesterday’s BBC meeting, Jim voiced concern over whether folks who don’t read the blog regularly would be able to find our posts on the days when there’s no blog on the Trail Baboon. We concluded that there’s really no way to ensure that, but that a reminder on the Trail whenever it’s posted might help. So here’s the today’s reminder. On Trail Baboon’s home page, before you click on the blog, there’s a list to the left of other “stuff.” The third item under Blogroll is called Baboondocks, that’s where you’ll find us if there’s no daily Trail.

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    1. Good, PJ. That solves the problem as I see it. I’m sure most or all of those who post regularly know that Boondocks is the place to go when there is not a new entry by Dale at Trail Baboon. It is my thought that some people who don’t post regularly or who are new might not know about Boondocks and how it is being used.

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  6. Let’s slightly rework the wording of the question. Let’s say Dale is asking “How well do you cope with medical adversity?” We can see that that question is a variant of the question “How well do you respond to adversity?” The only appropriate answer for someone who is relatively young and healthy, I think, is “I have no idea.” That’s the way life works. We don’t know–don’t have a clue–about how well we can handle nasty stuff until the day comes when we are obliged to handle gross or spooky issues; and then there is usually no choice about handling them well, so we do what we have to do.

    Almost all of us have reserves of courage and resolve that we know nothing about until the day comes when we are forced to deploy them to deal with a situation that would strike a younger person as unspeakably disgusting or onerous. If the person or pet you love becomes debilitated and needs loving care, you learn to do it. Beautiful young people in the prime of life stand in churches to promise that they will stick by each other “in sickness or in health,” but the full weight of those words is not clear until the day the partner becomes incontinent or dependent on painful palliative measures like giving shots. Young people don’t worry about such things, and that is appropriate. When the dark day finally arrives when it is necessary to do something that would have seemed impossible . . . people almost always respond by doing what needs to be done. I’m sure that some baboons already know this.

    Most of us have a hero inside us, a core of strength and flexibility that would seem impossible to attain until the day comes when someone we love absolutely depends on our realizing that amazing potential. If we love our spouses, pets, children and friends, we have the ability to do incredible things. And if we are lucky, we don’t get to find this out until we are very old.

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        1. glad to hear it. difficult is all a matter of perspective. 17 medications nothing difficult. bless you man. i worked with a guy about 10 years ago who had a line of vitiman stuff for the replacement of your bodies natural compliment output of needed daily stuff that nobody thinks about when you are being engulfed in the world of meds. i would suggest looking into it if i had any idea of how to find the name of the book or the company that it was build around.

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    2. sorry steve i couldnt resist.
      i agree with your statement and disagree.
      i would rework the question one more time and simply ask how do you cope?
      everyone goes through life with the tools being picked up along the way to deal with stuff. gross stuff is no different that hard stuff except its gross. you either look it in the eye or you dont. i dont think you have to give a dig shots to know how you will react when it comes to providing the whatever it takes factor or bailing and saying im not doing that. you know way before you get there. people who promise til death do us part will take their ball and go home if thats who they are and will stick it out through thick and thin if their constitution runs that way. its not circumstance its opportunity.

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  7. I take medicine by pill and injection very well, thank you. But I loathe anything delivered via liquid. It all tastes nasty initially, has a nasty aftertaste and inevitably makes me gag. My tastebuds and gag reflex have a strong aversion to, and a complex definition of nasty that I have no control over. Let’s not even think about procedure prep routines that involve massive doses of noxious liquids; nope, not happening!

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    1. The common procedure requiring a liquid prep is preventative of a condition that carries a treatment that is far, far, far nastier. Best to find those reserves of courage and resolve earlier rather than later.

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      1. And after dreading said preventative for a few years, discovered that it wasn’t nearly as awful as I had been expecting!!!

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  8. Ah, you have touched a nerve here, Dale! I am headed over to my mom’s asst. living place as we speak to get her signed up for the nursing staff to come in and give her the meds a couple of times a day. Over the weekend, our “system” fell apart, when – yesterday – she thought it was Monday and ended up taking both Sun. and Mon. first doses. She was in NO PAIN for several hours, though! (I’m afraid you’re going to hear more than you want to know about all this in the coming weeks… I’m hoping to write a blog post.)

    For myself, I do just fine, but I see the writing on the wall – there are moments when I have said to myself… “Hmmm, did I take my little pills this morning?” There is one of those pill strips in my future. And I just gave myself a pep talk about taking ALL my supplements daily… I’m going to need the B-complex (stress relief) in the next few weeks.

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      1. Actually, PJ, my first thought on reading Dale’s post was: “Man, I’m glad we don’t have to do that with MOM!”

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    2. I have had some experience with the need to pay attention to the medications used by elderly parents. My Dad took care of my mother’s medications, himself, when my parents lived in an assisted living facility. I’m sure he did a good job. When some narcotic pain pills for my mother disappeared the manager there claimed he misplaced these medications. It is clear to us that someone at that facility stole those drugs.

      My Dad had to do without pain pills he needed when he was in a nursing home. We discovered when he returned from to the nursing home from being in the hospital that the nursing home did not have the pills on hand he had been taking. When we found out they didn’t have the pills they realized that they had made a mistake and did eventually get the pills started again.

      Some nursing homes and assisted living homes no doubt do a good at managing medications. Some do not. At least that has been my experience. I think it is important to keep an eye on how these places are doing on taking care of medications.

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    1. Yes, cats are harder. Worse than pills, though, are medications you’re supposed to squirt into the mouth with a syringe. My cat Sammy has mastered the art of holding still till the crucial moment and then wrenching his head violently to one side, resulting in the medicine dripping down the side of his face onto the floor.

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      1. Dale – invest in a jar of cheapo peanut butter. My first Irish Setter, Katy Scarlet, was a master. Pill stuffed in cheese – cheese eaten, pill spit out. Pill stuffed in hot dog – hot dog eaten, pill spit out. Pill hidden in similarly sized dog kibble – kibble eaten, pill left in bottom of bowl. She was amazing. But she had to surrender to peanut butter; she just couldn’t get the peanut butter down without taking the pill with it. Current dogs are much easier to fool. (Side note: Rhiannon is fine… culprit was a sponge — kitten must have helped her get it off the bathroom sink!)

        For me, I don’t have too much trouble w/ medication… and luckily except for allergy help every now and then, I don’t currently need anything pharmaceutical!

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      3. EVen better is the tooth brushing process. Vets have recommended this for both our cats and dogs. After trying with several animals, all I can say is…”You gotta be kidding me.”

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  10. The seven-compartment pill sorter doesn’t seem terribly onerous to me – the ones I shudder at are the ones that have 28 compartments because every day has four rows, I suppose for morning, noon, afternoon and evening. Currently I can mostly cover my requirements at one sitting, except for popping some extra calcium during the day when/if I think of it.

    Some pills are really large – Jacque, try the calcium with the word “Petites” on the label – and others are very small and hard to find if you fumble them and they end up on the floor. I combine my three smallest into an empty gelcap, and then I can swallow three at once. This requires a small investment in time when I first bring the prescriptions home – I put a month’s supply at a time into the gelcaps.

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    1. I had to graduate from a seven-compartment pill sorter to a jumbo model with 14 compartments (seven days with an AM and PM pocket). It can be tricky keeping this thing in order. I currently am on 17 medications, so it isn’t easy to keep all the meds in stock. Insurance companies don’t want you to order pills when you are supposed to have several days’ supply on hand, so you have to time things so you are just about out of a prescription but yet you have enough to get by if the doctor doesn’t respond immediately to the fax asking to renew the prescription. And it sometimes gets confusing since some meds you take once daily and some twice daily and some you take twice in the morning, etc, until all sorts of combinations occur. All of this could seem onerous, but I try to have fun with it. Since I buy so much medication I am a hero at my little pharmacy; I’m the one-man profit center that keeps the pharmacists busy and profitable! I no longer have to identify myself since five or six pharmacists know my voice when they hear it on the phone. It isn’t a big bother to take pills, and it sure beats the alternative.

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      1. My wife with her 23 medications and her fuzzy brain is still a master at keeping track of all her meds and takes them easily. I am not looking forward to the day when I have to manage hers and mine.

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    2. I could tell you some stories about the “28 compartments because every day has four rows, I suppose for morning, noon, afternoon and evening” variety.

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  11. I don’t take too many medications, fortunately. I take medications for my allergies and asthma, but that’s about it. I’ve always used some supplements but I’m trying to research them more thoroughly before I start taking them. I talked with a nurse from Gillette Children’s one day. We somehow got on the topic of menopause. She told me that B6 is a menopause wonder drug and that doctors sometimes prescribe it for women who are suffering some of the more uncomfortable symptoms, including moodiness. I started B6 about 6 months ago but I’m still sweating through the hot flashes, thank you very much.

    Pippin has severe allergies. He’s allergic to a long list of trees, grasses and ragweed. Instead of the usual symptoms, like sneezing, he gets rashes and itchy and bites and tears at himself. I give him a diphenhydramine 25 mg tablet twice a day. When it gets really bad, like it did around Labor Day this year, he gets a visit to the vet and a course of prednisone. He takes it really well in a little peanut butter. I just scoop a little peanut butter out of the tub and cover the medicine with it. He licks it all very willingly off the tips of my fingers. Of course, these are not large tablets. He might not be so willing if it was a big tablet. He also takes things wrapped in spinach leaves or inserted into a small chunk of apple.

    OT: it was so good to see the Baboons who came to Rock Bend. It was really hot on Saturday and I was pretty busy at the North Grove stage most of the day. It was quieter on Sunday and I was able to spend some time with Linda. I was on vacation from the day after Labor Day until this last Saturday but I looked back and discovered that I’ve not had a day to just sit and relax and read since August 30. I’ve been helping my mom move since right after Rock Bend – most of last week. As of today, she is an Owatonna resident again. Owatonna’s Homecoming Queen of 1953 has come home to stay! (BTW, talk about stuff in somebody’s ATTIC! Now I’ve got a whole lot of stuff to find a place to store! Some of those objects come with a great deal of guilt/obligation…)

    I’m trying to keep up here – I try every day. Sometimes all I can do is read the topic and a few comments. I don’t like to post anything until I’ve read everything. I do know how to get to Baboondocks. Thanks for the invite to BBC, tim. I sure do wish I could come.

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    2. we have been including you on evey invite but yesterday or whenever i noticed we hadyour address wrong. whoever knows how to tweak that can contact me for kristas correct address.

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  12. Dale, as a shared treat with my two children I spent a bit of my small inheritance on the whole BBC James Herriott series, “All Creatures Great and Small.” We are now halfway through the 25 or so DVDs, getting used to Helen #2. They are a delight.
    With some more of the money we are taking a trip, flying to Seattle, which is going to be interesting. My wife is almost more mobile than I am. I have now given up bike riding, a hard choice. When we come back I will take a shot at the exercise bike upstairs, but unless there is some major change. I have given up a big part of my life. I am going to call and learn about traveling with a walker. Don’t yet know how we do that.

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    1. if you need a specific type of bike to ride and that is part of the problem and i can certainly help you get it under you to ride. if its creaky joints and bones then you are on your own.
      how do you shate a 25 cd book with your children who live mile and miles away? do you listen and compare notes together or listen and pass it on? i have read the book and found it a delight, its been a while but what a nice way to steer your brain.hope the walker turns out to be ok. ill bet its easy.,

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      1. Biking: my body (back problems and fm pain) and not the bike is the issue
        DVD’s of the TV show, not CDs: my daughter is only one hour away and we see her about once a week. As we finish a season we give it to her. When my son next comes home, he will take the whole set back with him.
        We check the walker at the gate. It is not that she needs it in the airport but when we get there.

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  13. All of my life, I wouldn’t even take an aspirin; now I’m on 14 pills a day. After reading Steve’s post, I’m starting to think this runs in our family? I’ve graduated in the University of Pill-taking to even taking some pills to counteract other pills . Pills for hyper cholesterol, mild hypertension, acid reflux, estrogen replacement, low vitamin D, an anti-depressant to counteract the 9 anti-seizure pills daily, and two kinds of anti-seizure drugs. My organizing them by color and keeping them all in a oblong dish is starting to confuse me lately. I just pluck them out of of this dish by color, shape, or size rather than use a pill dispenser thingy or the bottles. It’s not easy to accept that it takes a small drugstore to keep me alive, and likely for however many years remaining. The good news is that I don’t appear to have any side-effects from this massive array of medications.

    By the way, I’ve made an neurology appointment at Mayo Clinic in October. The same close girlfriend who demanded that I get a second opinion for the cancer (which ended up saving my life!) is driving me down there. My hope is that, even if they agree with the local diagnosis, they’ll be able to explain to me how the five EEGs show 30+ seizures a day yet my functioning and behavior remain completely unimpaired and symptom-free. Having joined four online epilepsy support groups and sharing my seizure story, not a single one of them has ever heard of my unique picture. I really do want company!

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  14. In the past few years I have gone from popping a daily multi-vitamin when I remembered to do so to taking enough prescribed medicines and supplements that I have a pill sorter with four compartments for each day of the week. It’s not so much the number as the timing of it. One daily pill for hypothyroidism has to be taken first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Another medication for mild osteoporosis is taken first thing in the morning once a week before the thyroid med. Calcium and other supplements are better taken a few hours after the thyroid pill – and best not to do it all at once because they say you can only absorb so much calcium in a few hours span. Then one more pill in the evening so I don’t get so depressed that I want to never get out of bed and I’m done for the day. I don’t mind taking the pills (especially when I can notice the difference in how I feel), but I find it mildly annoying to have to keep track of them all, and the pharmacy seems to specialize in messing things up – from not putting enough pills in the bottle to keeping the dosage the same when the doctor increases the dosage to not filling the prescriptions when they are on Autofill…it’s enough to drive me nuts.

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    1. I’m thinking I’d want to make myself a pill spreadsheet. Come to think of it, when I have to kitty-sit for my girlfriend, I do make a spreadsheet, as her two older kitties have MANY medical issues.

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    2. Although I haven’t had problems dealing with pharmacies, I know others who have had problems. I guess when it comes to medicine, you always need to pay attention to the people supplying it to be sure they have it right.

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    3. Mt wife is like that, some of the same pills.
      My wife has not had a thyroid since she was 14. She has to sleep until about 10, just needs that much sleep. Then takes the thyroid pill. Waits an hour. Takes three other pills waits an hour. Then takes about 30 pills and eats. The scatters another 30 pills through the day at specific times. We were just out and almost feel down getting into the car. I need to stay by her but she hates that. This trip is going to be interesting.

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      1. good for you. last year or was it two years ago was the big car trip. now the big air outing to seatle. i bet you will have great time and deal with whatever comes up with whatever it takes.
        enjoy

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  15. If Dale’had to contend with my dog, all he would have to do is let the dog think that the pills belonged to the cat. My dog likes to steal things from the cats (and us), espcecially food. Stow the pills in the cat food, and my dog would gobble it right up.

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  17. Completely OT… has anybody else been watching the Costa Concordia operation today? Little like watching paint dry but fascinating none the less.

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    1. i have had an interest in this since 7 am when they were delayed by rain then to hear it went exactly as they expected. … god bless those engineer brains,.

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  18. Someone ought to compile all the good ideas and info in the replies today, create a “How to Successfully Medicate Your Animal” article…

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    1. I had a dog that resisted pills. The answer was to give her a taste of margarine, which got her drooling, and then it was relatively easy to slide a margarine-covered pill down her throat. One more technique.

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  20. Dad used to give our old hound his daily aspirin when arthritis started to overtake him. Dad would bury the aspirin in a gob of peanut butter on an Oreo cookie. (Shouldn’t we all take our pills this way?) And it always amazed us. Given that he ate like every other dog (crunch into pieces just not quite small enough to choke on), he not only knew that this little, tiny aspirin was lodged among all of this other good stuff but, if he was of a mind to get an extra peanut butter-laden cookie, he would find the aspirin and spit it out consistently.

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