Treat Tuesday: DIY Pill Pockets Again

I started making my own pill pocket treats for Brisbane a couple of months ago, and since then I have made a few batches and learned a few things I wanted to share. Briz is allergic to chicken, turkey, duck, and eggs, and every flavor of Greenies Pill Pockets contains either chicken or duck. Here are the batches I have attempted so far:

Coconut flour/beef babyfood/coconut oil: It has been super hot here for the last several months with no sign of cooling off anytime soon. It has been so hot for so long that I forgot what coconut oil does when it gets cold. Like most fats, coconut oil turns to a nice hard solid when refrigerated. This batch of pill treats went from perfect texture to rock hard once I stuck them in the fridge. We still used them, but I had to let them sit out or roll them around in my hands a bit before I could squish the pills into them.

Coconut flour/bacon/bacon fat: Guess what else goes hard in the fridge? Bacon fat! These were definitely a lot tastier than the babyfood ones, but I ended up adding some peanut butter to get the texture right.

Unlike most bloggers, I am willing to show you my sloppily-formed
DIY pill pockets in all their lumpy glory.

Rice flour/Steak/Liver/Bone Broth/ Peanut Butter: I just made a huge batch of these and forming them into little pockets took forever. I tried adding a bit of xanthan gum to see how it changed the texture, but I don't think it did much. Maybe next time I'll add some gelatin for curiosity's sake. Yet again, I didn't set out to make these peanut butter treats, but I ended up adding it to help with the texture.

My ideal pill pocket texture is as close to the freshly-opened Greenies Pill Pockets as I can make it. This is a lot like playdough, it needs to stick to itself and be easily squished from one shape into another, but not be so sticky that the tub of them turns into an amorphous blob. This latest batch really didn't stick to itself, it resisted being rolled into shape and instead had to be smooshed rather firmly. I know that cream of tartar is what gives a homemade playdough its distinctive texture, maybe I should try that next.

DIY: Homemade Pill Pockets for Dogs with Allergies

Pill Pockets are super convenient for dogs that need to take pills, but my dog is allergic to them. All of the regular flavors, barbecue, peanut butter, are made out of chicken liver. The allergy formula Pill Pockets are duck-based, no good for dogs with poultry allergies like Brisbane. I discovered other pill treats that were safe for his allergies, but they were pretty expensive to use on a regular basis. I began to wonder how hard it would be to make something like that myself.

A quick Google search for 'diy Pill Pockets' led me to this site, which provides a simple recipe for peanut butter pill treats.

This easy recipe, which I can't actually attribute to anyone since the author of the above blog states that they discovered it via googling, uses only three ingredients. It calls for two parts flour, one part milk, and one part peanut butter. Knead the ingredients together and add a little more flour or milk until you have a nice playdough texture. This can be stored as-is or formed into balls or pockets. I was somewhat shocked at how lovely the ones shown on that site ended up, but the author mentions that hers didn't look like that so it's probably a stock photo after all.

After reading a few more recipes, I was able to generalize this formula so it can be used with a wide variety of ingredients. The formula is:

2 parts something dry

1 part something wet

1 part something oily

Pretty general, right? The ratios will need to be adjusted a bit as you make it, but they're a good place to start. It's basically a playdough recipe. Heck, I used to make peanut butter playdough with my daycare kids out of a recipe like this, we used powdered sugar, honey, and peanut butter. The trick is to use ingredients that dogs think are tasty.

Dry Ingredients: You'll need some sort of flour, but it doesn't need to be regular wheat flour. Thanks to the gluten fad, there are a ton of alternative flours available. For this project, I went to the bulk section of my local Whole Foods store. I purchase approximately one cup each of tapioca flour, garbanzo bean flour, and coconut flour. They also had rice flour, and there are a ton of other grain/nut/starch flours out there. It doesn't even technically have to be a type of flour, I'm sure that chicken powder or anything with a powdery texture would work.

Wet Ingredients: I've tried yogurt, and meaty baby food so far. I also plan to try broth, canned dog food, liver paste, and meat that has been whizzed in a food processor. Applesauce, mashed bananas, or any other type of fruit puree might work, but I would be sure to use at least one really super-tasty ingredient along with it. Water should also work just fine.

Oily Ingredients: Peanut butter is the one used in the original recipe, and it serves the dual purpose of making the treats taste awesome and providing the right doughy texture. I tried using coconut oil with pretty good results, probably any vegetable oil would work. Safflower oil would be good, even fish oil if you don't mind the smell. I plan to try hamburger grease and bacon grease next time I have some.

It's important to remember that these are supposed to be incredibly amazing treats full of awesomeness. The ingredients that meet those criteria will vary from dog to dog, but it's important to keep "awesome" in mind. Some dogs will love banana-coconut oil-rice flour treats, but picky dogs may turn their noses up. The relative health of each ingredient isn't a big consideration, as long as it does not upset your dog's tummy. Remember that half the recipe is made up of flour, and that a little of each goes a long way. I've been mixing these up using a tablespoon as "1 part", and a single tablespoon of bacon grease gets turned into a least a dozen treats.

How Do I Make Them 'Pill Pocket'-Shaped?
Some of the people who shared their recipes on various sites mentioned that they mix up their pill dough and then just store it in a big wad and pull off pieces as they need them. I had been dishing up Brisbane's pills in a lump of peanut butter, and individually rolling pills in dough every single day didn't seem particularly less inconvenient.

The Zoe Pill Pops come in individual chunks, but I have to moosh the pill into each one. I wanted something as convenient as the brand-name pill pockets.

To make these, I divided my lump of dough into little chunks, and then rolled each one into a ball, I pressed the back of a chopstick into the ball and then reformed it around the end of the stick. Twist the stick to remove it, and you have a less-than-perfect but highly functional treat that is all ready for you to hide a pill. These are generally going to be perishable, I recommend storing them in an airtight container in the refrigerator. I also successfully froze and defrosted a batch.

My first round of DIY pill pockets were tapioca flour-yogurt-peanut butter, and both Brisbane and foster dog Xena enjoyed them, though Ru and a visiting dog with dental issues both turned them down. The second was a batch of garbanzo bean flour-beef babyfood-coconut oil, but it turns out that garbanzo bean flour has a very strong taste that my dogs don't like, so everybody hated them. The third was a coconut flour-beef babyfood-coconut oil batch, which only Brisbane liked. So far tapioca flour seems to be the favorite dry ingredient over here. I fully intend to make some tapioca flour-applesauce-bacon grease pockets in the near future.

Treat Tuesday: Zoe Pill Pops

Zoe Pill Pops are soft, smelly treats that are just the right size for hiding a pill or two. They come in three different flavors, two of which are safe for poultry-allergic and egg-allergic dogs. The more widely-available Pill Pockets are all made with chicken liver, so I had completely abandoned the idea of using medication-specific treats for Brisbane until I found these. The bag is resealable, and the treats themselves are sealed in pairs to help keep them as squishy and stinky as possible.

Good For: Hiding great big capsules for endless 20-day courses of antibiotics. Giving meds in the morning without getting a spoon covered in peanut butter. Getting Brisbane to take his pills without finding half-chewed capsules on the floor later. Dogs with poultry allergies.

Not Good For: Constant daily use, they get expensive and there's not that many in the bag.

How Much We Like Them: I had a moment of panic when I realized we were going to be out of them in a couple of days. Fortunately Amazon will get them here before I have to go back to hiding those giant pills in a tablespoon of peanut butter.

10 Ways to Get Pills Into a Dog.

Brisbane is currently on four different medications, so pills are a daily part of our lives. At work I give a lot of dogs their medications in Pill Pockets, but the standard ones are full of chicken and the allergy-friendly ones use duck. Briz is allergic to poultry, so no Pill Pockets for us. Instead, we use a variety of other methods to get Brisbane medicated. He's mostly cooperative, but there are definitely some pills he minds more than others.

1. Just feed it.
Some dogs will snarf down anything. This works particularly well with fish oil capsules and pills that are designed to be tasty. A lot of joint supplement pills are made to taste good, and some flea and heartworm preventatives are as well. Brisbane will usually just eat his Comfortis pill plain, though he makes faces while he chews it up. I know plenty of labradors who will happily gobble down any object that is fed like a treat.

2. Throw it in some kibble.
Once again, this can be more or less successful depending on the dog and how they eat. Those that hoover up anything in their bowl without stopping to chew probably won't even notice an extra-special addition. Plenty of dogs at work get their tasty joint supplements tossed in with their kibble. Brisbane, on the other hand, would definitely leave that white pill behind in the otherwise empty bowl.


3. Throw it in some tastier food.
Brisbane will eat most pills right along with his kibble if I stick them in a bit of something tasty. Pumpkin, yogurt, apple sauce, and baby food all make capsules and tablets a little more palatable. The only pills Brisbane won't eat this way are large tablets, like human joint supplements.

4. Offer it on a spoon.
While Briz will eat most of his pills in a bowl of kibble, this isn't the way I normally get him medicated. Brisbane gets his daily ration of kibble in the form of training treats, or dispensed from some of our wide variety of puzzle toys. Food bowls aren't part of daily life here, but treats offered on spoons are a regular sight. Since my dogs are familiar with the concept of licking food off spoons, they are less likely to notice that there's an extra lump in there.

5. Hide it in a treat.
American cheese slices are pretty common DIY Pill Pockets, some of the dogs at work get theirs wrapped in bread or lunch meat. I like processed cheese because it can be mooshed around the pill really well. I find individually wrapped processed cheese slices like Kraft Singles pretty convenient for a dog that needs pills every day, I just rip off as much as I need and then wrap the rest of the slice back up. Ru never falls for this trick.

6. Pretend to feed it to someone else.
Nothing encourages pill snarfing like a little competition. Brisbane might be feeling a bit 'meh' about a treat, but he's willing to choke it down just to keep another dog from eating it. He will even deliberately swallow a pill he already spit out if he thinks Ru might get it. Of course I have to be careful not to accidentally medicate the wrong dog.

7. Feed three treats.
The pill is always in the middle treat. The first treat is to lull the dog into a false sense of security, there's no yucky pill hiding in there. The second and third treats should be fed very quickly, they'll be less suspicious of the second treat and eager to swallow it so they can hurry up and eat the third treat. For highly suspicious dogs, random three-treat sequences with no pills can help throw them off.

8. Put it in something stinky and wonderful.
That's not boring processed cheese, that's herbed goat cheese! I tend to save the extra-stinky stuff for temporary meds like antibiotics, and for dogs who really hate pills. When it comes to stress-free medication, the pill vehicle doesn't need to be a healthy part of their diet. I'm willing to use cat food, fancy cheese, and anything else that particular dog loves.

9. Put it in something sticky.
Peanut butter is currently my favorite way to get pills into Brisbane. One small spoonful will hold 6+ pills. It's tough to spit out, and everybody loves it. Brisbane will even take large yucky tablets this way, without trying to spit them out. I honestly think the pills make the peanut butter easier to eat, since they don't stick quite as much as just peanut butter. I've also seen peanut butter spread on bread and wrapped around pills. Honey would also likely work the same way.

10. Liquefy it.
Ru is currently on antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, and Ru hates pills. The easiest way to get meds into him is in liquid form. Usually I ask the vet for liquid medication, but sometimes I end up grinding up tablets and mixing them with a little water, yogurt, or baby food. This doesn't work for capsules or time-release medication. Ru doesn't really like his antibiotics, but I can just pull his little cheek out and squirt the medication into his mouth.