Pharmacist Comic
Posted by WhiteCoat on October 7, 2007
For the pharmacist and dog loving contingent who peruse and comment on this blog …
This smile’s for you!
WhiteCoat Rants
Random thoughts about US Healthcare
-
Recent Comments
Betty on Describing The Pain Scale rlbates on More Fishing … Marilyn on Rating the Insurers 
crankylitprof on Rating the Insurers ernurse on More Fishing … Marie on Rating the Insurers Samson Isberg on Idiocy - Alive and Well in Los… August 7 roundup on Why Is It … ? TK on Rating the Insurers mottsapplesauce on Rating the Insurers -
© 2007-08
I’m very laid back about other people using the content on this blog. If you want to use anything here for non-commercial purposes, go for it. Just link back to me. If you want to use something here for commercial purposes, ask me first. By submitting comments on this blog, you grant me unlimited permission to use those comments in the future.
Although I try to help people by posting some of the things I write, don’t take anything written here as medical advice. I’m not your doctor and you’re not my patient. Period.
Unless your name is Deborah Peel, I’m not talking about you here. If you are Deborah Peel ... it’s a pseudonym. Get over it.
October 7, 2007 at 6:23 am
VERY FUNNY!!!
Just got done having to do that for Bob,our German Shepherd. 2 HUGE pills, TWICE a day AND 8 drops EACH ear TWICE a day for TEN L-O-O-O-O-O-O-N-G DAYS.
Bob is a handsome Shepherd with a dark face and BIG teeth. Tie a white lace cap on him and he would look like the big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. It was not a good feeling to sometimes have to be prying his clenched teeth open with my fingers-seriously!
Two years ago, Bob had become seriously ill with Leptospirosis. He gets his vaccines but the shot they get doesn’t cover all strains. The vet said he probably picked it up when sniffing the urine of an infected animal that may have crossed through our yard. The fact that we had a lot of rain also had something to do with it. Bob almost died (heartbreaking to see) and all his organs were shutting down. His life was hanging on by a thread and it came down to one weekend -either he would make it or he wouldn’t. Thanks to our wonderful vet and then the staff at this wonderful emergency animal hospital we have our dog today. BUT, he had to take so much medicine over the next 3 months that he is now resistant to taking anything! Peanut butter works the best along with HOLDING his mouth shut and stroking his throat-NOT fun and VERY MESSY! However the cat is even worse!
P.S. Dr Whitecoat..Do you have an option for visitors to delete their own comments?
October 7, 2007 at 7:43 am
Love this.
I’ve been lucky. My dog’s just take the pills like they were treats or in their regular dog food.
October 7, 2007 at 8:29 am
Thanks, Doc–that’s a good one!
Although there is a subset of dogs and cats which are truly maddening to “pill” (i.e., administer oral meds to) even for the experienced, I have a few tricks that I’ve shown to owners and they seem to be helpful. I always groan internally when I deal with someone who was given medication for his/her pet and told “give one of these three times a day” and not shown how to do it. (Although most of us are on this sheet of music, some, alas, are not: “three times a day” needs to be translated as “every 8 hours”. More on this topic some other time, perhaps.)
STANDARD DISCLAIMER: Don’t get bitten or scratched in the process. If you do, wash wound(s) with soap and water and seek medical advice. Contact your veterinarian for further advice if needed.
1. For dogs, put oral meds in something tasty. This is a no brainer, as the younger crowd says. I’m more of an advocate of small pieces of hot dog or cheese than peanut butter, but hey, whatever works for you and your dog. This trick generally doesn’t work well for cats, since they aren’t “wolfers” of their food.
2. Try to avoid sticking your hand (large dogs) or fingers (smaller dogs and cats) into the back of the mouth when giving meds. This can be an excellent way to meet your local hand surgeon.
3. Trick for cats:
a) If they have claws in front, wrap cat in a thick bath towel, with only head exposed. If you’re quick with step b below, this might not be needed, and you’ll avoid creating a Pavlovian response to bath towels.
b) The single most useful trick I can suggest for cats is to tip their heads back so that they’re looking straight up. (Trying to push the meds down the pharynx while the head is in a normal, looking-forward position will get you that trip to your hand surgeon.) Gently open cat’s mouth and quickly drop/gently pitch the med straight down, then quickly close cat’s mouth and hold it closed. Stroke chin (cat’s, not yours) until you see the tongue flick forward between the lips.
c) Further cat tricks: Although many meds are film-coated for easier swallowing, sometimes a dab of margarine on them helps with swallowing. And the good taste will help slow the development of that Pavlovian response to the sound of the medication container. My personal favorite, used in the clinic daily, is to chase the oral med, given as described in b, with 0.5-1 cc of water, delivered from a 3 cc syringe. Just a small quantity of liquid in the mouth will trigger an immediate swallowing reflex.
October 7, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Ha ha…as a cat and former dog owner, as well as someone who worked at a boarding kennel for years, this made me crack up.
Dogs are seriously easy compared to cats. We had to give our cats a monthly tablet for worm prevention (before the stuff you put on their necks) once. We thought ahead of time and got the “tasty, flavored chewables” instead of the pill kind. Cats still stuck their noses up. They knew something was amiss. I coated the damn things in canned food, chunk light tuna, you name it. The cats would eat around anything that had the slightest smell of meds.
October 7, 2007 at 5:01 pm
DVM-It used to be that Bob would wolf down ANYTHING including medicine enclosed in a hot dog, spoon of cad food or any other item he considered to be a tasty morsel. I don’t know if was the frequency combined with the length of time or maybe something repugnant in the meds themselves. Well, sometimes he would be so stubborn it would break open or melt and then that would taste bad. We went through that this time around too. Anyway, it was the veterinary emergency hospital staff that suggested the peanut butter after I called telling them he was refusing the medicine in any food. We’d try to hide it in soups, canned dog food, spaghetti (things he would normally inhale)but he would leave the pills or they would be half bitten into. We’ve tried dropping the food way back in his mouth and massaging his throat. Recently, we just wrastled with him twice a day to get the 2 big pills into him with peanut butter. Then we had to stand there and hold his jaw shut, while massaging his throat until he swallowed. The ears weren’t as bad, once I got the hang of it and realized to go straight down from the angle I was working at.
BTW -we had a springer spaniel that loved to go in the pond and she was prone to ear infections. I did not know that dogs with ears that point up could get them. The vet thought that my son spraying him full force with the hose while he turns into PacDog trying to chomp away at the stream might have been what did it, that it might have shot into his ears. If so, it is the 1st time in 7 years.
CATS? YIKES! We had a cat who had his eye scratched open by another cat. S/p surgery he had to be given an eye salve twice a day, eye drops twice a day and an antibiotic (don’t remember the dosage)and my husband or son had to help me.
I hope I NEVER EVER have to give a cat a pill again for the rest of my life! You wouldn’t think something so small could give you that much trouble! The first time I gave it to him.. he lobbed the pill clear across the kitchen. Did that one more time and then I wised up. Gave me a long scratch on my breast. We did get scratches on our wrists/hands. I don’t remember if he ever actually bit us. I went back to the vet after enough of this and got that pill popper thing. Forget about it! Just didn’t work for us. In the end, they held him in a towel, I got pill in mouth and then had to hold his mouth closed and stroked his chin. His response to that was he opened his lips and let the pill now frothy mixed with saliva drip out the sides of his teeth! I honestly don’t know how much of that med got in his system!
Something else kind of surprised me. I took it for granted that cats are clean animals always grooming themselves. My gosh -he got so mangy looking after about a week! He was in so much pain that he had stopped washing himself/combing his hair.
recently while at the vet the receptionist was telling me that someone called to schedule an appointment for their dog to get a BORDELLO shot!
and someone else called because they wanted their pet to get a dispemperament shot because they thought it would make them nicer! 
October 15, 2007 at 11:23 am
That’s cute!!! my dog got hit by a car and she had to take HUGE pills three times a day for two weeks. needless to day i did not like my dog after she bit my finger. but she’s better now so that’s all that matters.
April 19, 2008 at 2:49 pm
DVM is on the right track about dogs, but there is an even better way to do it with dogs. Make two treats; I like cheese the best, but use what works. Hide the pill in the first treat. Stick the first treat (with the pill) on your index finger. Stick the second no-pill treat on your middle finger. (This is why cheese works better than hot dogs, because it would be harder to get the hot dogs to stick on your fingers.) Lightly close your hand so that no treats are reachable.
Hold your closed hand, palm up, in front of the dog’s nose and let him sniff. When he senses the treat, extend your index finger to reveal the first treat. The instant the dog has the first treat in his mouth, extend your middle finger with the second treat. Dogs are greedy. They’ll wolf down the pill treat in order to make room in their mouths for the second treat.
They never check the first treat for a pill. They may check the second treat, but you don’t care, because you know you’re innocent on that treat.
Peanut butter is OK but not preferred, as it generally takes the dog too long to swallow peanut butter, and you don’t want the treats to “merge” in the dog’s mouth.
May 16, 2008 at 9:41 am
I’ve only had to give my cats liquid meds. The first few time it was a bit of a struggle, but then I figured out a trick: get the medicine in the syringe, then suck up about 1cc of tuna juice.
Now my cat runs over when she sees the syringe, stands on my lap and drinks it as I slowly squirt it into her mouth. I don’t have to hold her or anything.
May 30, 2008 at 8:07 am
I’ve only had to give my cats liquid meds. The first few time it was a bit of a struggle, but then I figured out a trick: get the medicine in the syringe, then suck up about 1cc of tuna juice. –Meg
Wow, that is a really great tip. Thanks for posting that.
July 21, 2008 at 10:24 am
[...] found a cute cartoon about this on another blog. Check it out here, along with some other readers thoughts on giving pills to [...]