It was about a week ago, I think. It was just before bedtime, and I was tired. I got a small plate from the cupboard, spooned a serving of Vollwerth’s braunschweiger onto it, and nuked it for 12 seconds (because my dog’s carnivorous ancestors always ate their braunschweiger warm.) I smeared Franco’s two pills with butter, aerosol cheese, and wrapped the whole thing in warm braunschweiger.
I called Franco over. He sauntered up, sniffed my hand, and walked away. I pleaded with him. I added whatever other favorite of his I could think of, but he remained aloof. I needed to get this medicine into him so I could go to sleep. We had a lengthy discussion about this. At one point I shoved the meatball under his nose a little too aggressively, and he, quite appropriately, grumbled at me. I looked at Frank, he looked at me, and I swear I am not making this up… I could see his demeanor change, he took pity on me, and ate the thing. “Good boy,” I told him as sincerely as I felt. “Now I can go to bed,” I thought.
The next morning I stumbled on this concoction. I slice a V out of a fairly thick piece of mild cheddar cheese, put some peanut butter in the V, followed by the pill, more peanut butter, and 3 slabs of cheese. It looks kind of like a corndog at the Minnesota State Fair. I then cut up some more cheese, put that on the palm of my hand, and the corndogs on top. The theory being he’ll want to vacuum up the small pieces of cheese on the bottom enough that he’ll just eat and swallow the corndogs first.
This has worked pretty well until this morning, when he again became wise to me. I had to take the discarded pill back a couple of times before I disguised it well enough for him to eat it. I think we have about 7 days left on this 6 week regimen. We’ll both be glad when it is over.