Why Medicating Dogs Is Harder Than You Think

Our team is pleased to share the findings of our latest research, recently published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science. This study looks at a simple but surprisingly common challenge in veterinary care: how dog owners manage the often stressful task of giving their pets oral medication at home.

While this is a routine part of pet ownership, it is an area where relatively little real-world data exists. Our research set out to better understand what happens outside the vet clinic, what owners experience day-to-day, and what stands in the way of successful medication adherence.

Why We Looked at This

Our aim was to move beyond clinical studies and surveys, which can sometimes miss the realities of everyday pet care. Instead, we turned to social media listening to hear directly from owners themselves, in their own words and on their own terms. This approach allowed us to capture unfiltered experiences and frustrations shared in online spaces where pet owners go for advice, support, and community.

How We Did It

We gathered a total of 26,846 public posts from platforms including Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, blogs, and forums. This raw dataset represented a 30-day window of conversations about the challenges of administering oral medication to dogs.

Cleaning the data was an essential part of the process. We removed duplicates, irrelevant content, retweets, overly short posts (fewer than 15 words), and very long posts (over 640 words), which typically offered little useful context for this kind of analysis. After this step, the dataset was reduced to 22,606 cleaned posts.

To ensure the posts were truly relevant to our research question, we used GPT-4 to perform zero-shot relevancy filtering. This further reduced the dataset to a focused group of 4,787 relevant posts where dog owners were discussing their real-world experiences with medicating their pets at home.

The final dataset consisted of 3,629 posts from Reddit, X, blogs, and forums, plus 1,158 posts from Facebook. The majority of posts came from English-speaking countries, with the largest proportion from the US, followed by the UK, Australia, and Canada.

What We Found

Stress and Struggles With Medication

One of the strongest signals from the data was the emotional strain that medicating pets can cause. Many owners described feeling anxious, stressed, or even guilty when giving their dogs pills, particularly when the dog resisted or became fearful. About 12 percent of all posts explicitly mentioned anxiety around the process, and terms like worry, nervous, scared, and panic came up frequently.

The Practical Challenges Are Real

Owners regularly discussed the practical difficulties of getting a pill into a dog, especially large dogs. Many told stories of failed attempts to hide pills in food or of dogs skillfully spitting them out. Even chewable medications, while helpful for some, were not a universal solution.

What Works for Owners

Our research surfaced a range of owner-reported techniques that helped improve success with pilling. The most common approaches included hiding pills in peanut butter, cheese, or meat, crushing pills and mixing them into wet food, or using distraction methods such as giving a plain treat first followed quickly by one containing the pill.

These simple but effective strategies are well known within pet owner communities and could be more widely shared within veterinary practice as part of routine advice.

The Appeal and Risks of Chewables

Chewable medications were generally seen as helpful, making the process easier for many owners. However, some expressed concern that these medications were so palatable they could lead to accidental overdoses if left where dogs could access them.

The Cost Barrier

A consistent theme in our data was the financial pressure that comes with veterinary care and medications. Owners spoke openly about delaying or skipping treatments due to costs. Some even turned to crowdfunding to cover veterinary bills. Frustration with pet insurance was also common, with many feeling that premiums were high and coverage limited.

Perceptions of Success Matter

Owners were far more likely to stick with treatments when they saw a clear benefit, especially for chronic conditions like arthritis or allergies where medication visibly improved their dog’s quality of life. On the other hand, if treatments did not seem to work, caused side effects, or felt expensive without obvious benefit, owners were quick to express frustration or even mistrust toward veterinary advice.

What This Means for Veterinary Practice

Our findings suggest that there is room for veterinary professionals to better support owners in managing medications at home. This could include offering clearer advice on pilling techniques, being upfront about costs and options, and prescribing chewable or longer-acting formulations where appropriate.

It also highlights the importance of clear communication about the benefits of treatment. Owners are more likely to stick with a medication plan when they fully understand how it helps their pet and what to expect.

Why Real-World Data Matters

This project is part of our broader work at Surrey DataHub to explore how real-world data, including the insights shared every day on social media, can inform veterinary care. While this does not replace clinical studies, it complements them by capturing the practical, emotional, and financial realities that influence how care is delivered and experienced.

Where We Are Going Next

Our team plans to continue using this approach to look at other aspects of veterinary care, whether that is different types of treatments, other species, or broader questions about the relationship between owners, vets, and the pharmaceutical industry. We are also interested in expanding this work beyond English-speaking audiences and combining it with other data sources to build a more comprehensive picture of animal health.

Read the Full Paper

If you would like to dive deeper into the research, the full paper is available in Frontiers in Veterinary Science. You can read it here.