Yes, lots of tricks. We had lengthy conversations about this, in particular for Yoda around Sept or so, so those are in the archives. Lots of our dogs like butter. But more recently I found that the pill pockets work really well and continued to work for a long time. The pill is much better hidden than with cheese or even butter (although butter is hard to beat, although it might not be the best item in terms of nutrition).

But does Supai have a good appetite or does she have a chemo-reduced appetite? If she has a good appetite, pill pockets should work well. If she is off her food, you might need to work harder.

This has always been an issue for Peanut. She's a finicky eater to begin with.

After her cancer diagnosis, I slowly changed her diet, for easy adjustment. I cooked more for her than I did for myself! But she grew bored with all the cooked food and prefers her Evo kibble and Evo canned food. Weird girl.

At first with Peanut, I kept a variety of "pill pockets" on hand. This meant anything from sliced cheese, for rolling up a pill... to hot dogs... to hard boiled eggs. She eventually turned her nose up at everything if it had a pill in it. Sometimes she'd even take the treat, fake chew or swallow while I watched, then spit out the pill as I turned around! She's sometimes too clever for her own good!

What I found actually worked best for her, was feeding her out of my hand. I'd mix her normal batch of food, with the pills in it. Then I'd hand feed her. It worked wonders. I don't know why, exactly, but it was the easiest way for me to get her to eat her pills.

Hopefully you'll find what works best for Supai. Good luck!

-Melanie, Peanut, Bubba.

I tried the pill pockets when Jack was first diagnosed, and those were ultimate fail.  PB worked for a while, and then he got bored with it.  So I tried butter.  This was my gift from heaven.  He LOVES taking pills now.  He hears me open the butter dish and he comes running down the hall and is excited to take his herbs.  He also likes cream cheese and I've found that cream cheese sticks to the pills easier so you can use less of it.  I found a whipped kind at our local bagel shop, and Jack's personal favorite flavor is blueberry.  We're back to butter though because of the suger in the cheese.  Good luck!

<3 Laura and Butterball (i mean jack)

Butter and cream cheese are fine when it comes to capsules, which seems to be pretty tasteless. But if there is a nasty bitter pill like those horrible TRAMADOL tablets (capsules are fine, tables are NOT fine), they might need to be wrapped better, depending on the size of your dog's snoz. (Tazzie had a HUGE snoz , as you know.) For that, the pill pockets functioned fine. But apparently some dogs (Jack) have too refined taste for them. The taste of tramadol can put a dog off of all his or her pills. That is just Tazzie's humble opinion as relayed by his human.