Ah, a new month is upon us, and after ripping off another page of my calendar, I take my battle station at my pill box in the kitchen to rapid fire heartworm medication at the canine crowd residing in my house. Instead of shouting, “Take that hill!” like an Army officer screaming above the din of battle, however, I’ll be urging, “Take that pill!” during my own desperate fight. After having served 20 years in the military myself, I’m thinking this latter-day combat is just about as tough, and a hand-to-hand struggle–or hand-to-mouth in this case–is a real possibility.
The problem is that I have a number of doggies, mostly rescues, and I’m trying to save a buck by buying less expensive, generic heartworm tablets, round, hard, tasteless-looking affairs, rather than their more costly, brand name counterparts, shaped like a tasty meatloaf. My vet assures me that both do the job just fine, but the more expensive brand name version costs about $10 per box more. Ten bucks buys a heap of hamburger for the old man’s weekend barbecue, so I thought my dogs and I would just do some adapting. Three of my barking buddies–Stretch, the Newfoundland Landseer, Valley Girl, the Alaskan Husky, and Miss Trudy, the Clay Avenue Post Office Pit Bull mix–had another idea: “Let’s take him down this time!” Those three threw themselves into their canine conspiracy with a vengeance.
When I brought the generic stuff home last month, my other guys gamely swallowed my new plan without a fight. Heck, ol’ Marley, the household’s over-exuberant Yellow Lab, scarfed down that new heartworm pill so fast he couldn’t have known if it were a ping-pong ball or the next cure for cancer. He just stood there afterward with his tongue hanging out in that big doggie grin of his hoping for another one. Then the three amigos shouldered Marley out of the way, moving up to the head of the crowd, and desperation moved up with them.
At first, the battlefield appeared quiet. I handed each one–Stretch, Valley Girl, and Trudy–their pills and waited for them to swallow them before I moved on to the next patient. They were each moving their jaws up and down and back and forth like they were tasting the pills and getting set to chew ’em up, when, apparently, one of them gave the signal, and the dogs of war made their move! I was dodging heartworm pills shot from the mouths of determined dogs like bullets shot from the bores of M-16’s.
Undaunted, like a soldier picking up hostile grenades to throw back at the enemy, I picked up those pills, stuffed them into all-beef wieners, and tossed them back at my furry foes. At first my strategy seemed to be a success. Once again, their jaws were pumping, but their tongues seemed a little too active, searching for something. Sure enough, within seconds came the rat-a-tat-tat of pills ricocheting off of cabinet doors, and once again, I was dancing around the kitchen avoiding their fire. They, of course, retained the all-beef wieners.
Retreating to the relative safety of my pill-box to ruminate, I decided on the doomsday option: wheat bread and unsalted butter. Yes, I was going to make toast of my adversaries this time. Well, maybe for my adversaries. At this point, the battle really heated up as if someone had turned on an oven. Actually someone had. After I had cooked up my new plan sufficiently and completed my new warhead delivery system, I pounded those pills into powder, sprinkled them onto the buttered toast, and tossed them over the pill-box to the waiting, as yet unmedicated, canines. Oh, yeah! It worked. Without a lumpy pill to find and spit out and with butter masking the taste, my battling beasts were pacified.
Trudy relaxing after the struggle
I can hardly wait for the next round. Maybe I’ll buy a helmet first.
Rubbernecking Around 