The perfect pill hider for pets

When people come to our house for the first time, they almost always say the same thing: “That is the biggest dog I’ve ever seen.” Some of them even whip out their cell phones to get photographic evidence. Buddy is half Newfoundland, half Great Pyrenees, and he weighs 137 pounds. He’s also an old guy with arthritis, and at his size he needs more pills than the average pooch.

Buddy gobbles up his fish oil capsules like they were dog treats, but getting him to take his glucosamine has always been a problem. Up til now, our most effective method has been hiding them in a peanut butter sandwich, which isn’t all that great for a guy with a weight problem.

Now he’s developed a double infection (both ears, plus the nearby skin where he’s been frantically scratching) which means he‘s got to take another 10 pills a day. And there’s just no way to stuff them all inside a couple of peanut butter sandwiches without a few winding up on the floor.

Gazing in the fridge, looking for inspiration, I noticed the leftover tuna noodle casserole. Except I was out of noodles the other day, so I made it with rigatoni instead. Those pasta tubes are the perfect size to hide Buddy’s pills in, and they’re a heck of a lot cheaper than those pill pockets you can buy at the vet’s office. (Just make sure you cook them first, so they’re both tastier and stickier for pill-retaining purposes.) I suppose smaller pills might fall out of rigatoni, but there are plenty of smaller kinds of pasta you can buy.