My Household Zoo: Pilling A "Horse".. or a Normal Dog

I've been meaning to post about these two things for awhile, but I haven't gotten to it yet, or until today in the case of one of those things. Firstly, Jack is undergoing immunotherapy/hyposensitization/allergy shots, whichever you'd like to call it. More on that later, because it's a lot of cool and interesting stuff and I recommend it to anyone with an allergic dog.

Secondly, he had his first little "infection relapse" a couple of weeks ago so we took him into the veterinarian. Luckily, he wasn't itching, which is something new to us. However, it started out with a sudden large, oozing, seeping, nasty hot spot under his ear which we treated by trimming the area and cleaning it twice daily with a Povidone Iodine solution. That was his first "real" hot spot, but he always used to get little dry red itchy patches - about dime-sized - that I called hot spots. Only when I met that oozy thing did I realize the true meaning of "hot spot". I considered posting pictures, but I didn't want to gross you guys out.

Anyways, after it cleared up, which only took 2-3 days, his skin started turning dark and crusty. Rather quickly, little crusty patches started to spread from that side of his neck down to his shoulder, chest, then armpits. The hair on these patches would come off in crusty clumps. Again, he wasn't itchy, so I'd never seen anything like this. Cleaning them wasn't helping, so off to the vet we went!

Luckily, Jack didn't have to take the dreaded prednisone because he wasn't itching. He did get a horse-dose of cephalexin, an antibiotic, though. Two of these giant pills twice a day for three weeks. Look at the size of them! Look at the size of the bottle! Bet you've never seen a prescription bottle that big.

His three week course is over now, and his skin is all cleared up. Yay!

I'll share some tips that I use to pill my "horse" and my other dogs. Maybe they can help you too.

Cheese. Forget the peanut butter, it's too messy. Plus, I don't know about you guys, but my dogs lick peanut butter, rather than just swallow it like some other dogs do. Eventually he would uncover the pills.
Feed an insurance piece before the hidden drugs. It helps, I swear.
Really, you don't need a lot of cheese. Check out the small strip I used to cover up two of those giant pills. It's literally like, 1/5th of a slice, and some of it is going to the "insurance piece".
Sometimes that fails. Actually, it failed after I took the photos of this pilling, even though it works about 75% of the time. In that case, have your dog sit, quickly open his mouth, push the pills back into his mouth as you can, then hold the mouth shut. Do it quick, because it's really not pleasant for the dog or for you. One thing that I only learned after starting school is that the further you push the pills back, the quicker they swallow. Don't be afraid. Obviously, this is easier on small dogs than large dogs. With Jack, I literally stick my whole hand into his gaping mouth, and end up with slime all the way up to my wrist!
And just something that I find amusing: