Ted's Blog

She was still itching so I took her back to the vet and they gave her some new anti-itch medicine and some antibiotics for where she had gnawed and licked so much that she had a sore. They thought it could be scabes, but ruled that out because I didn't have a rash. I think that's kind of funny that they can determine what the dog has by what the owner doesn't have. I also switched flea medicines from Frontline Plus to Advantage which I found pretty inexpensive at petshed.com which turns out to be an Australian company that ships their orders from Sydney. Typical, drugs are always less expensive in other countries.

Anyway, they also said she had dry skin and gave me (sold me) some fish oil tablets. They are big yellow gel caps. They said you could throw them in with the food, but if the dog wouldn't eat them you could cut them open and pour the fish oil on the food because they like it anyway (Clio was taking five pills at dinner since two of her medicines required two pills each; she eats them if I put them in peanut butter so she got a lot of peanut butter that week). Even though they don't smell like anything, Katie was very interested when I was taking these particular pills out of the jar for Clio so I gave her one. Katie is very careful about medicine and won't fall for the peanut butter thing like Clio. But she was interested in the fish oil tablet. She held it loosely in her mouth, walking out to the den. She licked on it some and after a few minutes I guess finally got through to the fish oil and finished off the pill. The next night I put one in with her food. She immediately picked it out, went to the den, and started working on it. But before she could get through I took it from her and poked a hole in it and spread it on her food (I didn't like the idea of fish oil leaking onto the carpet). She liked that. The next night I wasn't going to give her a tablet but she kept looking at me then at the bowl of food then back at me. She was reminding me I had forgotten something. I cut a pill open again and poured it on her food. She immediately ate the squeezed out gel pill. Then she would take mouthfuls of food and drop them on the floor next to the bowl. She would only eat the ones that smelled like fish. One night Clio wasn't that hungry but when I checked back, Katie had gone over and picked out the fish oil tablet from Clio's bowl.

People act like dogs don't have very good taste, but as good as their sense of smell is, their sense of taste is probably nearly as sharp since the two are related. I don't think dogs are necessarily picky, but they know good and well what they are eating and probably even subtle differences between different batches of the same brand of food.