Your dog is sick - your cat is sick and you have to give your pet medication.

How do you give a pill to a cat or dog?

Pets will tend to resist being handled with force more than actually taking the pill. The trick is to use as little force and restraint as possible and to be quick!

Place your thumb and index finger just behind your cat’s upper jaw behind the canines (your finger will fit in the space behind the canines) and tilt the head upwards. This will cause the mouth to open allowing you to quickly insert the pill (medication) with your other hand. When inserting the pill you must be quick and make sure that you have tossed it far in the mouth near the base of the tongue.

Once the pill is inserted, close mouth shut and hold for a few seconds to make sure the cat will not spit the pill out. If it seems like the cat may be holding it’s breath (to spit out the pill as soon as it has a chance) blow on its nose this will force him to swallow.

If you have a difficult cat wrap the cat in a towel with only head sticking out before administering the medication.

For dogs use the same technique only you will have to put your hand in their mouth to go place the pill near the base of the tongue.

For those cats and dogs where it is impossible to give the medication, try to offer a very small amount of food or treat (or milk) with the pill hidden inside.

www.pets.ca

It’s hard enough for a veterinarian or a trained team member to give pet medications, let alone your average pet owner.

Pet owners struggle to follow the vet’s orders to give their pets medication, and we know the pets need the medication but they don’t want to take it, and just like with toddlers, we have to give pets a prescription they don’t like.

There’s a recent study that shows that only 10% of cat owners and 30% of dog owners succeeded in medicating their pets correctly. What this means, is that prescriptions sent home by the veterinarians often end up in the cupboard or on the person, and not in the pet. And what happens, is that the pet owner is too embarrassed or hesitant to go back to the veterinarian and admit failure.

One trick is to use Pill Pockets. Rather than giving one Pill Pocket as recommended with the medication, you give three. The first one is an empty Pill Pocket as a tease. The second one is the Pill Pocket with the medication. The third one is the chaser.

And for the animal that won’t take any medication, they seem to spit everything out, try a compounding pharmacy. There are several companies out there, FlavoRX is one of them, and they will make your pet’s medication into pet flavors, such as Salty Bacon, Atlantic Salmon, Angus Beef and Bubblegum. Some companies will even send you samples to find out which flavor your pet prefers. About 70% of dogs and cats will lick this medication right out of the spoon. You can do this with both pills and liquids.

And, if nothing else works for your cat, there is the new transdermal system. The medication is put into something that is simply absorbed into the skin, so you wipe put the medication in the cat’s ear. While not all medications can administered this way, many of the common medications can.

However, if your pets takes pills easily, be aware that many pills can be lodged in the esophagus up to five minutes later. While this is uncomfortable for your pet, it can also lead to inflammation and can cause severe problems long term. So, for both dogs and cats, if you are not using something that is chewable, give a water chaser. When you give the water to help flush the pill down, simply grab the corner of their lip, tip their head back, and squirt it in the corner of their mouth, and it will act like a funnel and run down behind the back of their teeth and right down their esophagus. If you try to put the water on their tongue, they will just spit it up right back on you.