# how do you get a dog to take tylosin tartrate? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 30, 2012, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134 "2012-01-30T01:23:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134/22 "2013-09-19T05:23:49Z")
As long as we’re feeding zombie dogs… My sister freezes the tablet in butter. The result is a little slippery “butter pill” that the dog still doesn’t like, but can be made to swallow. (She tasted a little of the med, and said it tasted absolutely hideous!) ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134/23 "2013-09-19T11:43:25Z")
A slurry in a syringe is probably the lowest-fuss method. You want two syringes, one with your med slurry and one of plain water to wash down any bits stuck to the tongue (and to rinse off the godawful taste.) Grab the snout as if to pill, wedge the syringe into the corner of the mouth pointing as far back as you can easily get it, and slowly, steadily press the plunger. You don’t want to just trickle it in; the taste will hit them and it’ll get really hard to hang on. You don’t want to blast it in, because that tends to make them gag and the larger volume makes it easier to spit out. You can also mix a little Jello in the slurry to help cover the taste. That’s what we always did with the horses at the mixed practice I worked at ages ago. (Trying to pill a horse is impractical on a lot of fronts, so all oral meds got the slurry routine, and when you’re trying to do something to a horse on your own, the horse’s cooperation is pretty important so you want to jolly them along when at all possible.) Cherry seemed to work best, or maybe the patients we had on the days we had cherry were just better natured and more cooperative anyway. One word of warning about the Jello thing, though. You CANNOT make up extra syringes for later treatments if you’re using enough Jello to make it not completely awful. That shit will set up like a brick and you’ll never get it squirted out of that syringe. ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 12:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134/24 "2013-09-19T12:14:47Z")
How much powder in a dose? My dogs can’t resist braunschweiger… Try making a ball of it, poke in an indentation and add the med, then cover it up, sealing the powder inside. If there’s a lot of powder to hide, this might not work. ETA: I’ll stand by my advice, but not for zombie dogs. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2013, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134/25 "2013-09-19T21:00:33Z")
My sister tried secreting the med in a ball of yummy stuff – meat, cheese, all sorts of things – but the nasty taste apparently is so pervasive, the dog learned not to trust offerings of goodies. One problem is that dogs like to chew their food, so eventually they hit that pocket of nasty. Blending it in and mixing it all up also seems not to work too well: the nasty flavor gets in all the meat. A Nobel prize for the chemist who can make this stuff tasty! ---
**Author:** ![sadieabbystella](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@sadieabbystella](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sadieabbystella)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134/26 "2014-01-19T00:03:43Z")
To get my dog to take tylosin (Tylan) powder, I put in on 1/2 a slice of soft white bread, then fold the bread up and squish it together in my hand to form a compact clump. My dog has never refused that. You must use soft, fresh bread. If it’s dry, the bread will not clump together well and the powder will leak out. You may be able to use a smaller piece of bread if your dosage is smaller than the one I use (1/4 teaspoon). My dog also has to take a thyroid pill, so I put that on the bread with the tylosin. Works every time. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134/27 "2014-01-19T05:18:12Z")
Tell the dog it’s actually tylosin phosphate? Serious answer: go the the pharmacy and pick up some empty gel-caps. Fill them with the powder and administer as you would any other capsule. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134/28 "2014-01-19T05:57:50Z")
> [@Sudden\_Kestrel](#): > > We have a dog that needs a couple of medications, and we actually have to crush one chewable tablet, slice open the side of a Pupperoni, place the powder inside, and then tease her with it until she gets so excited that she won’t inspect it very carefully. We used sliced open hotdogs for my late dog’s daily pill, and yeah, if you tease enough they don’t even chew well enough to notice there’s a pill. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2014, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134/29 "2014-01-19T08:13:58Z")
> [@flatlined](#): > > My vet once told me that what he did with dogs that would eat the treat and spit the pill/jell cap was to hold a treat in each hand, tease the dog with them both and then give the one with the meds while offering the second treat to the dog. The dog would gulp down the first treat so it could eat the second one. This is basically how we got pills into dolphins. Stick a pill into a fish and feed it to the dolphin – but they quickly learn how to tell when a fish has a pill in it, and they won’t eat it. So we held out two fish, and fed them the first one with the pill, and immediately the second one without a pill. Then they would gulp down the first one, to get the second one. (And you probably thought dolphins were smart, didn’t you?) (ETA: The pills were just several kinds of vitamin pills. Captive marine mammals supposedly might not get all the vitamins they need through the monotonous diet they get fed, so they get vitamin supplements.) ---
**Author:** ![lc99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/90db22/32.png) [@lc99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lc99)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2015, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134/30 "2015-06-09T19:18:39Z")
We were advised to give a daily amount of Tylosin powder to our little dog, 6 pounds and 14 years old; until the jar was empty. I tried a few methods at first. Mainly trying to tuck some of the powder inside a morself of food. Two problems with this: Once she detects the taste by swallowing that food (rice ball or whatever), she runs away because of the horrible taste. And, while I am trying to prepare that morsel of food, some of the powder taste contaminates my fingers and the rest of the food; so she knows it is coming. After struggling with this for a week or two, I spoke with some veterinary staff who explained it as follows … the powder is meant to be spread, or diluted, across an entire serving of food. They believe that once it is dissolved and spread over a volume, then the taste will be in the background and not intense. I did not think that would work very well, i.e. the dog is still not going to accept the taste. But I came up with a variation on the technique, and it worked for us: 1. Prepare a bowl full of mashed up food (fully cooked PLAIN rice, and some boiled egg or just egg white from the boiled egg). 2. Add a little UNSALTED chicken stock (from the grocery store, I buy the Swanson’s), and mash that all pretty thoroughly, and mix in a few days’ worth of the Tylosin powder. Just putting in enough liquid to help this all mash together … don’t want it to become too wet and runny. 3. Keep this bowl of mash in the refrigerator for the week. 4. When it’s time for a daily serving, put 1 to 2 ounces of the Unsalted Chicken Stock in a very small elevated bowl, heat that in the microwave oven for 20 seconds or so. 5. Take the mash (which contains dissolved Tylosin) from the refrigerator, and with my fingers I make little balls of the mash, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 inch each. They’re more like blobs, or dumplings … drop them into the warm bowl of unsalted chicken stock. 6. Once I have filled up the soup with dumplings, maybe it is 2 ounces of food, serve it to the hungry diner. 7. She loves the taste of the egg-laced balls in the chicken soup that she gobbles it up, not noticing there is some Tylosin dissolved into the mash. 8. I pull the bowl away and make her rest for 10 minutes or so, once or twice, partway through the meal, to avoid her overloading her stomach and retching it back up. 9. She will gobble up the entire dish full, and will lick it clean. (10. I am careful not to ever put food containing Tylosin in the microwave oven, since I assume you would not want to cook the medicine lest its effectiveness be defeated. I presume that it’s okay to dissolve it and let that sit in the refrigerator, I doubt that would be any problem whatsoever.) Not a perfect solution, but it got us through about a month of Tylosin powder. The only other thing I was thinking about trying was to obtain something compounded (chewable) through the Wedgewood compounding pharmacy. But in our case, I prefer to do the dumpling soup. Larry [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-get-a-dog-to-take-tylosin-tartrate/611134.md?page=1)