The cheapest, easiest-to-make pill pocket that your dog will never refuse can be made from cooked beef liver. Here's how. Cook a pound or so of beef liver in a little oil. Include the liquid in the package. Do not salt or season. Let the cooked liver cool and cut into pieces. Put it in a food processor and process until it looks like canned dog food. Wrap pills in this paste. Form it into an oval-shaped ball with the pill in the center. Keep the pocket small so the dog swallows it whole without chewing. Store left-over liver in a Ziploc bag in the fridge.

I have such an open raw emotional spot having gone through this with my over-the-rainbow-bridge cat that I haven't been up to contributing to this thread. But...I am such a huge fan of Smudge [and his Mom] that I must add my best thoughts and wishes for his rapid stabilization/recovery. I'm also a huge supporter of the cat nip therapy. My cat hated...with a very loud passion...anything to do with riding in the car. Of course...there was no way to get her to the vet without the aid of a vehicle...and it broke my heart every time I had to bundle her up and take her. But...it became a little more tolerable for her with the use of cat nip. Her loudly voiced opinions of the entire procedure became farther spaced although they never did cease entirely. She wasn't as susceptible to the over all effects of cat nip as some cats are...but it did help [both of us] in the end. And...yes...I agree cynic. They do forgive. The night before her last trip...while laying in my lap...she sat up...outstretched her paw and patted my face several times. Then went back to sleep. I would never consider declawing an animal so when she reached out her paw to my face...it took all my trust of her not to pull back. I wasn't sure whether her claws were extended or not. They were not...and her paw felt softer than I'd ever remembered. I choose to believe that it was her way of forgiving...and of saying goodbye. We'd been through a lot together. I don't think she wanted to leave but she'd contracted pancreatic cancer...and like my deceased husband who died of the same malady...she'd reached the end of her days.

I had one too that no trick worked on. He even faked swallowing! I tried the holding the month shut and rubbing his neck, and as soon as I let go the pill would be airborne. I did learn that I really could push it pretty far back and he had no choice but to swallow it. My other dog at the time, well, she just wasn't as smart. You would just say "treat" and she would gulp it before anyone else could get it. My neighbor swears by the Greenie's pill pockets.

Rebecca, If I had small boys who would enjoy shooting squirrels, I'd put them in the car and drive all day to bring them to you. I hope you can find a couple of little guys to borrow who want to come over and hang out with you and shoot squirrels with big Super Soaker type water guns. Augustus and the chickens do enjoy the sprinkler. I put a sprinkler in the yard and run it for them every so often---generally not long enough to really help the grass, but long enough for everyone to play in it. It isn't just the poultry that enjoy it--wild birds of every size from huge crows to tiny hummingbirds also enjoy having the sprinkler on. They especially love when I have it on underneath trees so that they can sit in the trees and let the water from the sprinkler cool them down while they sit there. This is how Tim knows he is married to a lunatic woman----he'll come home from work, the sprinkler will be on in the yard and he'll walk inside and say "gave up on rain and watering the yard?" and I'll say "nope, watering the birds". lol Or, he'll come home from work and there's huge puddles in the driveway. He'll ask hopefully "Did it rain?" and I'll say "Nope. I made puddles for the birds and the butterflies." I also will turn on the soaker hoses to water the clay soil around the foundation so that the foundation won't crack and shift (we've been successful so far---here since 1999 and the foundation remains intact despite some huge cracks in the ground in areas where I don't water). The soaker hose doesn't run at a high enough rate to really cause puddles, but it wets down the ground and the chickens will lay on the wet ground because it feels slightly cooler. Whatever it takes. In really hot weather, we run fans in the chicken coops to at least give them some air flow. Even when I stop watering the garden for the most part, I never stop watering the birds or the soil around the foundation. Melissa, Hopefully the plants will recover. If a person must spray with soap, it is best to use a real insecticidal soap like Safer's Insecticidal Soap as it is micronized so it is less likely to burn---and also because it is real soap. Back in the day (when all of us were much younger) you could use dishwashing liquid because it really was made of soap. So, flash forward to the 2000s and dishwashing liquids are not soap any more---they are much harsher detergents and also contain degreasers and other chemicals that can strip the cuticles off plants and leave them vulnerable to burning---either chemical burning or sunscalding due to the stripped cuticles. You still can buy real soap in most stores--look for the bars of Fels-Naptha on the laundry aisle (just cut shavings off them and dissolve them in water), or Murphy's Oil Soap, which the last time I checked still is soap and not detergent. Or, if you have any local stores that carry the Dr. Bronner's line of pure castille soap (or any brand of castille soap), those are real soap and not detergents. I always have Dr. Bronner's lavender soap, and usually his peppermint soap and tea tree oil soap on hand all the time, but use them more for pests around the house---like ants trying to come indoors, for example. I do not actually use soap in the garden myself. Well, maybe once every few years, and the only way I use it in the garden itself is to walk out to the garden with Safer's Insecticidal Soap in a spray bottle in my hand and then I spray the soap directly on the pest that is vexing me---which only would be blister beetles or a cluster of squash bug or leaf-footed bug nymphs. Nothing else is enough of a problem for me to bother with the soap. I never spray soap on my plants if I can avoid it--other than whatever tiny portion of the plant gets hit when I'm spraying a blister bug or a cluster of freshly-hatched nymphs. I don't think soap is good for plants in our climate and avoid its use as much as possible. Really, I always start with the lowest toxicity solution as a part of IPM and that's hand-picking the bugs and then dropping them into soapy water to drown, cutting them in half with my scissors or carrying a bowl of soapy water and flicking pests off the plants and into the bowl of soapy water....and I bet I don't do any of the above more than a half-dozen times per year. I just wait for the beneficial insects to kill the bad guys, and then I deal with the few bad guys that the beneficials aren't able to control. I've learned that the less I use pesticides in my garden, the fewer insects I have overall, and that is true virtually every year. When I start interfering in the natural ecosystem of the garden, that's when pest problems skyrocket. I hope you get the rain that is in your forecast. They keep pushing our rain further out and decreasing the expected amount, so my hopes are falling accordingly. It has to rain again eventually, but y'all need it a lot worse up there so I surely hope you get it. Nancy, Poor downtown Wagoner. I hate it when a downtown area burns---often you lose some charming older, historical buildings and that is sad. I'm glad you had a good day with your mom....and then you got to see her in what probably is her more usual (lately) confused state. It is a reminder of how dementia works---even after over a decade with Alzheimer's and a long, slow decline, my dad still could have a rare lucid moment or hour here or there where it seemed like he was himself again for a while. Those rare lucid periods became more and more rare (almost nonexistent) near the end, but then on his last week, when he was in hospice care, it was like God gave him back to us for a day or so and we had actual conversations for the first time in a couple of years, and he seemed to have a clue about who we were and what was going on....and then a couple of days later he was gone. I am so grateful we had that couple of good days before we lost him. To me, just those couple of good days felt like some sort of miracle. It was hard on my mom, though, because she misinterpreted those good days as a sign he had miraculously been cured of Alzheimer's Disease and started second-guessing everything that was going on medically. It sounds like your trip has been very eventful. If I was only going to grow one black tomato, and flavor was all that mattered, I'd grown Black Krim. A lot of people don't like it though because it splits and cracks a lot in heavy rainfall and is not the most productive plant. So, for someone who might have high expectations for higher productivity and less cracking, maybe JD's Special C Tex (it is really early in my garden), Vorlon (also early), True Black Brandywine, Black From Tula or Carbon. Or, if your friend would prefer a hybrid, then he cannot go wrong with Cherokee Carbon, a hybrid of Cherokee Purple and Carbon. I continue to pray for all of you and for Titan's situation. I so hope that he is cured. I hope the new vet will have some better options that help him recover and without the misery of throwing up the antiobiotics over and over again. Poor doggy. I know it is stressful for Gary to have to deal with it alone but he is perfectly capable and you need to enjoy your time up there and not rush back prematurely after everything you went through on that long, long drive. When we first moved here from Ft. Worth, I missed everybody and everything terribly and drove back down there almost weekly. For a long time, Oklahoma felt like the new place and Texas felt like home. I never second guessed our decision to move here but it sure took me a long time to adjust. Gradually over time the driving down to Ft Worth so often ceased and eventually almost halted altogether other than trips down for family get-togethers and holidays. At some point, I realized that I had let go of the idea that Fort Worth was home...now it is the place where I gew up, but it stopping feeling like home in the early 2000s. The growth down in the metro area is just so massive and miles and miles of once open-countryside that I adored is now just one big massive new housing development and the accompanying strip malls after another. Every time we drive down, there's less countryside and more concrete---and at an astonishing rate. I hate all the concrete and the traffic and I hate seeing former farmland continually converted to more concrete. Now, when we are down there, even though I am thrilled to spend time with my family, the fact is that we cannot get in that car, get out of there and get back up here to our rural area quickly enough for me. I believe the DFW metro area has gained a couple of million people since we left it. That is insane, and it is never-ending. Southern Oklahoma is and always will be home despite the frustration of near-constant drought and venomous snakes. Moving here still is the best decision we've ever made. Lots of Texas areas that still had somewhat reasonably priced land when we moved here and that might have been viable options for rural country living down in Texas closer to our family are just concrete jungles now and I'm so glad we choose to move further out to an area we thought would stay rural for the rest of our lives. Many of the little rural Texas towns we loved and could have relocated to back then are huge now---like Frisco and Celina. Even Denton, which wasn't small but still had semi-rural neighborhods, is huge now and not nearly so many rural or semi-rural areas remain around it. I know you'll be happy to get back home to Oklahoma where you belong, but it also is good that you got to make that trip home to spend time with your loved ones. Dawn