Dogs and cats can be given powdered herbs, powder herb extracts, and liquid herb extracts in their meals. If your pet's appetite is poor because of illness or learned preferences, you may need to disguise the taste further by using especially strong-smelling foods: like tuna, sardines, liverwurst or braunsheiger. For some pets, baby food or canned cat food is such a novelty that they will take the herbs mixed with these foods. Some pharmacies and veterinary manufacturers make a flavored "tab wrap" or "pill pocket" for dogs and cats; these are especially designed to hide small tablets. Other tasty treats to hide herbs include cream cheese, jelly, peanut or other nut butters, ground meat or liver (beef or chicken), and fruit. Applesauce is particularly recommended by some herbalists. Flavored gravies for pets can also be used to dilute the herbs and mask the taste. *
If your pet's appetite is suppressed due to illness, do not mix medicines in regular meals-administer the herbs separately in a different food treat or in empty gel caps or via oral syringe behind the tongue.
Powdered herbs may be mixed into small "pills" of butter, then frozen to increase firmness. You can blend them with anchovy paste, organic peanut butter, jelly, jam, sandwich pastes, or other thick tasty foods.
It may be easier in some cases to administer the powdered herbs by mixing them into a liquid (usually hot so that powdered herbs 'dissolve' either with boiled liquid/water or by placing the 'mixture' of liquid/water and powdered herbs in a microwave for 5-7 seconds and then letting cool off) that is to be gently and slowly administered by syringe. Vehicles that have been recommended include meat or poultry broth, clam juice, flavored syrups, and fruit juice.
You can take advantage of your cat's fastidiousness by mixing the herb in a hairball gelor Laxatone vegemite or anchovy paste, and smearing it on his or her paws-only very sick cats will let that insult go unchallenged! Some herbalists make traditional teas using meat broth instead of plain water, then frozen in ice cube trays to preserve until the day of use.
If herb capsules must be administered, they often "go down" more easily if one end is covered in butter or olive oil. Be sure to administer water or broth afterward to ensure that the capsule passes quickly from the esophagus to the stomach.
The other option is by oral syringe...mixing enough water to dissolve the herbs and make a solution and using an oral syringe you can give it by squirting it down the very back of the throat. After a few times it becomes easier to use this method. The option for oral syringe is at time of checkout also.
*Copyright 2003, Veterinary Botanical Medicine Association, Kennesaw, Georgia
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