Pills often come in two different versions. The most appealing one is often meat flavored and your PON will chew it up. However, most pills shouldn't be chewed and you need to find another method to get your PON to take them.

The most popular strategy for medicating your PON when giving pills is to hide them in food. Some accepted foods for this are cheese, bread and meat, pumpkin and peanut butter.

There are also pocket shaped treats that you can buy to actually hide the pills in. If you are going to medicate your PON this way, you need to ask the veterinarian which types of foods can be used with each medicine because not all human foods agree with dogs.

Most PONS prefer peanut butter, which can be messy but works every time. Some people even put peanut butter on a small piece of bread, wrap the bread around the pill (so that it is covered in peanut butter) and give it to their PON. Typically, you can just use creamy peanut butter by itself and put a heaping spoonful on a plate, or sometimes just on the spoon, and then insert the pill. PONS just lap up the peanut butter, pill and all. This technique has a high success rate.

If this doesn't work for you, and you have a calm PON, you can slide the pill between cheek and gum and slowly push it back behind the teeth. The PON's swallow reflex will usually help get the pill swallowed. However, be ware of some PONS spitting out the pill when you walk away. Open the PON's mouth and look under his tongue. If the pill is still there, stroke his neck to get him to swallow the pill.

I do not recommend trying to push the pill down your PON's throat if you don't know what you're doing.  Ask your vet to illustrate how to give your PON pills the next time you visit. Good luck !