Feeding & Nutrition

The worming tablet arrives every three months in a foil strip, and every three months my dog, a suspicious old collie, turns into a creature who can detect medicine through three layers of cheese. I'd done the cheese trick, the peanut butter trick, the hiding-it-in-a-meatball trick, and he'd done the spit-it-out-across-the-kitchen-floor trick, so by the third year we were both weary of the dance.

Then my sister, who keeps goats and knows more about pilling stubborn animals than any vet I've met, told me to try a date. Not the diary kind, the fruit, a fresh Medjool with the stone pulled out and the tablet pressed into the sticky cavity where the stone had been. The flesh closes over it, the sweetness hides the bitter, and the whole thing is soft enough that a dog doesn't have to chew it, just swallow, which is the part he's bad at with a dry pill.

I tried it. He took it from my hand the way he takes every forbidden sweet, swallowed without the usual tongue-map of suspicion, and looked up expecting more, which is the look that told me we'd finally beaten the system. No spit, no scramble, no tablet discovered later behind the sofa where he'd hidden it to teach me a lesson.

What I hadn't expected was how much calmer the whole house got. The worming day used to mean me cornering him, him reading the cornering, the two of us doing a slow grim dance around the table, and a tablet that usually ended up on the rug anyway. Now it's a date, literally, handed over like a treat, and the only drama is whether I remember to buy dates before the strip runs out, which I forgot once and we slid right back into the old chaos.

The vet, when I mentioned it, raised an eyebrow and said the sugar's not ideal for a dog his age, which is fair, so now it's a date every three months and nothing like a date the rest of the time, a deal we've both accepted. He gets his medicine, I get a dog who trusts the hand that offers it, and the floor stays free of discarded tablets, which is the quiet win nobody puts on the packet.

I've since learned the trick works because the fruit is sticky and scent-strong, and a dog's nose commits to the smell before his brain catches the pill, which is the same reason the cheese worked until it didn't, when he got clever. The date is harder to get clever about, because there's no edge to refuse, no bit to spit, just a soft sweet thing that's gone before he's decided whether to argue. If you've got a pill-refuser, skip the drama and try the fruit, and keep the dates in the cupboard so the day doesn't sneak up on you again.

My sister, pleased to be right, now sends me a text every quarter that simply reads buy dates, and I've taken to buying a box at a time so the strip and the fruit arrive in the same week by design rather than by luck. The collie has learned the box means the event, and he parks himself by the fruit bowl on strip day, a small supervisor making sure I don't forget him, which is more attention than he gives anything else in the kitchen.

The foil strip itself is a marvel of modern inconvenience, each tablet sealed in its own pocket like a tiny argument waiting to happen, and the date is the peace treaty I reach for instead. Nine years of failed tricks ended with a piece of fruit, and the only thing I regret is not asking the goat-keeper sooner, before the rug had seen quite so many tablets spit across it in protest.

The odd thing is how the date reframed the whole relationship around medicine, because before it the tablet was a fight and after it the tablet is a treat, and the dog can't tell the difference, only I can, in the easing of my own shoulders when strip day comes. The collie who used to read cornering and bolt now reads fruit and settles, and the change in him started with a change in me, the person holding the thing.

A friend with a terrier asked for the trick and reported back that her dog, who'd once needed two people to pill, now presents his nose at the sight of the fruit, which is the highest praise a method can get, a dog who asks for the thing he used to flee. We compared notes and agreed the date is the only honest bribe we've found, because it doesn't pretend to be medicine, it just is the medicine, wrapped in something he'd eat anyway, and the deception is kind.

There's a small pride in doing the thing the easy way now, the strip opened, the stone out, the date pressed, the whole ritual taking less time than it once took me to corner him, and the collie watches the process like a connoisseur approving the vintage. The sister who taught me texts buy dates every quarter and I've taken to keeping a box in the fruit bowl so strip day and fruit day land together by plan, not luck, and the dog parks himself beside the bowl as if to audit the event, more attention than he gives anything else in the kitchen, which is the quiet tribute a stubborn animal pays to the trick that finally beat him.