“What’s ‘taters’ precious?” Gollum asked.
What’s ‘taters’, eh?”, Sam responded, “PO-TA-TOES! Boil em’, mash em’, stick em’ in a stew.” (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers.)
Poor Samwise, his mind is limited. There are SO many more things you can do with potatoes!
Since Sampson was diagnosed with another lick granuloma, he’s been on a mess of pills. Two antibiotics twice a day, two nerve blockers twice a day and a pro-biotic twice a day. Getting him to take the pills in the evening is easy, he gets ground food and the pills get mixed in. 99 out of 100 times he eats them, on the rare occasions that he doesn’t, I put a bit of yogurt or a raw egg in his bowl on top of the pill and problem solved.
His breakfast is another story entirely.
In the mornings he gets chicken necks and no matter how I arrange them, there’s just no way to hide his pills. Typically I use peanut butter, to shove the pills in, but I ran out. So I used sun butter instead, but yesterday morning after one set of pills I ran out of that too. I had quite a dilemma on my hands.
I dug frantically in the refrigerator, but couldn’t find anything to hide some pills in….until my eyes fell upon the left over boiled salt potatoes.
Why not, I thought.
I took about 1/2 a cup and fork mashed them.
To that I added about 1 1/2 tablespoons of sour cream.
I mixed it just well enough to incorporate the sour cream.
It was a bit on the thick side, which was exactly how I wanted it.
I placed a small bit on a spoon and added the pills.
I added a bit more potatoes and rolled it into a ball.
It ended up being about the size of a small cocktail meatball.
I offered it to Mr. Picky who had been sitting there watching me diligently.
Nom, nom all gone.
To sum it up, here’s what I did.
1/2 cup boiled salt potatoes
1 to 2 tablespoons of sour cream
Fork mash the potatoes and add sour cream to the required consistency. It’s that easy. 🙂
WHAT? Are you saying you don’t know what boiled salt potatoes are? Holy snap! They are so easy and so yummy that I normally want to lick my plate.
Okay, okay here’s how you make boiled salt potatoes.
What you need, red potatoes (leave the skin on) salt, butter.
Quarter the potatoes (unless they’re huge, then cut them into decent sized chunks. I’d say about an inch if you can manage it.) Cover with cold water and add about 1/4 cup of salt for every 3 or 4 medium sized potatoes. Cook until they are tender, but not too much, you don’t want these babies disintegrating.
Once they’re tender, drain the potatoes and place them back in the pan, with about 1/2 a stick of butter for every 3 or 4 medium sized potatoes (this is key, you will not get the same results if you use margarine or Brummel or any other type of butter replacement.) Once the butter has melted, give them a stir and then shove those suckers into your mouth as fast as you can.
You may want to wear some loose clothes too, because if they’re anywhere near as popular at your house as they are at mine, you might have to wrestle someone for seconds and that’s hard to do in tight pants.
Have you ever had to be creative in getting pills into your pet? What are your secrets?
If you’d like some great recipe ideas for dog treats, head on over to Kol’s Notes, Koly’s Mama always has something tasty on the menu, today it’s Autumn Gold Gluten Free Dog Treats. And this is the Tasty Tuesday blog hop hosted by Kol’s Notes and Sugar the Golden Retriever.
Hope you don’t have to resort to this too often or he’ll be on a diet again! All that yummy soured cream 😉
My peeps LOVE mash potato. Many says its okay for dogs to have sour cream but many dogs can have an upset stomach. May we suggest something … since you are giving it to Sam w/ his pills … use Greek yogurt instead (or make a small portion for Sam only). Give it a try … you might like it too. Happy Tasty Tuesday. Lots of Golden Woofs, Sugar
Wrigs is on medication all the time due to his IBD and lymphangiectasia. I hide his pills in a small amount of raw ground meat (just enough to conceal the pill) and he gobbles them right down. He’s on a homemade diet, so I always have meat on hand for him. 🙂 I’ve used cheese in the past with previous dogs. (Wrigs can’t have that due to dietary restrictions.)
I’m easy, I eat any pill in anything, Katie is a whole different story. She can suck all the stuff off and spit out the pill in about a second. Mom either grinds the pill and mixes it with yogurt or she just stuffs it down Katie’s throat. She does not like the later, but sometimes she gets sick and tired of trying to get Katie to eat a pill nicely. We love potatoes, they are super yummy and yours sound really tasty Mom says 🙂
I thought table salt, like sugar, was bad for dogs. Well, maybe not “bad” as in toxic, but not really good for them either. Anyway, my girls are lucky — most of their pills are chewables. When Callie needs her Tramadol, though, I have to hold her mouth open, shove it down her throat, and hold her mouth shut. Somehow, no matter what I try to disguise it in, she always knows it’s there and spits it out. But I do give her a treat for letting me force-feed it to her. I hate having to do it to her, but she leaves me no choice. Thankfully, she hasn’t needed the Tramadol in a while…the Rimadyl keeps her arthritis pain at bay most days, as long as I get her some exercise along with it.
Yum…yum…good enough for me to eat!!!!!! Have to keep that in mind for pills…thanks jodi
I melt cheese and coat the pills with it. First I give them a tiny bite of cheese to win their confidence then I slip in the pill-cheese. I’ve never had the slightest problem with this method.
We don’t trust cheese or pate anymore but peanut butter and jam does it for us. Have a terrific Tuesday.
Best wishes Molly
Oh my Ma has snuck pills into something very similar but she used leftover sweet potatoes. They are my favorite and so I just eat it right up, pills and all!
Oz
I think I would take a pill in those potatoes too!! Have you seen this homemade pill pocket recipe? http://muttnut.blogspot.com/2012/11/how-to-make-homemade-pill-pockets-for.html sounds pretty simple!!
Holy cow…I would eat those taters too. Cheese is the go to pill hider around here.
Sounds delicious! I have more to say on the topic, but I suddenly feel the desire to run to the store and buy some potatoes and sour cream. BYB 🙂
WOW you have a NEW invention… TATER POCKETS fur Pills…
We have had a PLETHORA of Potatoes on OUR HILL lately.
Potatoes are a great idea. It also sounds like you may need to go food shopping. You’re running out of everything. I have given Cupcake her pills in a dab of cream cheese. I’m not sure that would help with Sampson’s giant horse pills, though!! Yikes.
Thanks for the recipe! That sounds delish!
Emmett and Cooper will eat a pill in anything. Heck, Emmett will eat a pill if you toss it and tell him “catch.” Lucas, on the other hand, is a pill ninja. I’ve caught him carrying one off to spit out elsewhere, thinking he was fooling me. We’ve never tried potatoes, but I’ll add that to the list!
You are one lucky pup! Those look delish!!! Following from the blog hop!!
What a trickster! How we love taters
Benny & Lily
What a good idea Jodi, and great that it worked. It’s hard when they are fussy, or “on” to their pills. If I handed either of the girls a potato ball they’d look at me as if I was poisoning them, but Toby on the other hand eats first and asks questions later. I could stick a pill in a raw potato and he’d probably eat it.
Poor Sampson. Hope he is better. If I made the potato/sour cream mixture, I surely wouldn’t feed it to the dog because it looks yummy. Heck maybe I should make some to take my pills. 🙂
ps we just use peanut butter. 🙂
Brilliant!
Besides, Sam was too busy being stalwart to be too creative 😉
Those potatoes sound GOOD. I’d pop a garlic clove or two into the water when boiling. Maybe a sprig of rosemary. Mmmm. And have you tried Pioneer Woman’s Crash Hot Potatoes? They are our RUIN. OM NOM NOM.
I grew up eating plenty of new potatoes, and yes, they’re ridiculously good; but truth be told, I don’t know if this is how my mother made them or not. Now I’m going to have to ask her. I don’t know, but d*mn, they were good. I’m going to try your way and see if they taste the same. I won’t tell mom if yours are better… she’s 78 with a weak heart.
Mashing ’em up with sour cream? YUM. If I tell you I need to take some pills, will you make me some?
My two will take pills in just about anything that I can fold or mush around a pill. Austin eats (anything) first, asks questions later. Li’l Girl will sometimes get wise on me and spit out the pill, but I can usually trick her on the second or third go.
That was a very good idea! Great pictures. What we have done at our clinic for lick granuloma’s is sedating the dog, using our laser surgery unit not the therapy unit and zapping the granuloma until down to healthy tissue. Put a little ointment on it and wala they don’t come back. Good luck healing his up, they can be a bugger at times.
What a great idea! Lucy was easy… if the capsule fit up inside a green bean, we were good 🙂
That was very creative! And those potatoes sound yummy, I am going to have to try them that way.
We pretty much never run out of peanut butter in this household, my hubby wouldn’t have it, so we haven’t had to get creative yet!
We use either peanut butter, or sometimes I break out the BIG GUNS: a pat of butter. Silas seems fully aware that there is a pill in the butter, but he doesn’t care, because BUTTER.