Hair Of The Dog
I have a five-year-old dog, and I’ve had him since he was three months old. I love him so much. He’s an amazingly playful dog—a Jack Russell. A few years ago, he started developing really itchy red skin on his toes, and the poor pup would constantly lick his toes to the point where he was making them almost hairless. I took him to the vet, and they said it was allergies.
They prescribed him medication. We’ve been buying this medication for him ever since, occasionally skipping a few weeks and using a mini-dose of Benadryl until we purchased more allergy pills. The pills helped, as in he wasn’t constantly licking his toes all the time, but he would still lick them so it wasn’t a sure-fire solution. Let’s say 80% cured.
Now, on to the screw-up. We tried giving him the pills with nothing, and he just puts them in his mouth and spits them out. So, we started putting them in a little bit of peanut butter, which he licks off a spoon, and the pill gets swallowed along with the peanut butter. A few weeks ago we ran out of peanut butter, so we used Jell-O instead.
It worked just as well because he swallowed it right up. Over the next few days we did the same thing, and he wasn’t licking his toes AT ALL. We had a light bulb moment. We took our dog to the vet to get an allergy test, which we should have done FROM THE START. Test Result: Our dog is allergic to peanut butter. We’ve been giving him his allergy pills dipped in the substance he’s allergic to. He’s a happy dog now with no more itchy toes!