Every three months, my dog and I must engage in an inter-species struggle almost as old as the very bond between man and his best friend.
It begins when vet sends a letter to remind me of the impending conflict:

Dear Ian,
Our records show that Smudge is now due for his worming tablet….

There you have it. Let the battle of the pill commence.

And it is a battle indeed. Intelligence versus instinct. Stimulus versus response. The evolution of the wolf meets the evolution of the chimp.

When he was a puppy, there was no problem. Smudge enthusiastically  gulped these oversized worming pills down. In fact he was at risk of vacuming up the whole pack foil and all  if we left it lying around. Back then I thought this was all going to be all so easy-peasy.
But as he matured he has become more fussy.  Pill not good.
Pill smell bad.

Plan A.
This month, I tried a sneaky covert approach. Offering it wrapped in a reward.
Dangling one of his favourite liver treats out in front, I then held him in the sit position until an icicle of anticipatory drool dripped like clear mozzarella from his moustache.
Good boy! I gushed, sneakily swapping the liver for the medicine.
Smudge could smell a rat. And just sat there with his black nose all a quiver.

Its not surprising that Smudge sniffed out my deception. The nose of a dog is crammed with 225 million scent receptors ( compared with a snotty 5 million in humans). When he sniffs in through his dilated nostrils, the volatile oils that are carried on the air currents pass through a maze of turbinate bones in his nasal cavity, to be trapped in a layer of mucous richly innervated with scent receptors.
From here messages are relayed via a rope of nerves back through the ethmoid bone and into the olfactory bulb of his brain.
Some scientists have estimated that up to one third of a dogs brain is involved in olfactory processing.
So advanced is their sence of smell, that dog noses are aeronautically designed to stop any ‘out-sniffing’ from disturbing the subtle odours sitting on the ground. Their nares have evolved contours that force the air out sideways on exhalation.

OK. Plan B.
I cut the tablet in two, and wrapped it in his favourite brand of  cheese.
Normally, Smudge would pee a full bladder on an electric fence to get a good slice of this aromatic vintage cheese.
He took the offering, ( and a fair portion of my distal phalanx) with gusto, chomping and chewing and shmacking with tail wagging enthusiasm.
Until………poot! Out spits the tablet… denuded of cheese and fully intact.
Smudge sat there looking up at me and let out a short snort. Or was that a snigger?
Having taken a completely different evolutionary pathway, a dogs olfactory bulb has a rich plexus of interconnections with other areas of its brain, tying in memories, emotions, memories and doggy concepts that must paint an entirely different contextual world than humans could ever hope to experience.
If you have ever caught the smell of honeysuckle and been transported back to that forgotten lane-way where you first kissed Karen Hobson, or smelled baby soap and had some memory of a soapy bath-time as a kid pop back into your brain from way back in your mental filing cabinet; you can see just how powerful the sense of smell is interconnected with our own memories.
Compared with dogs, our olfactory senses are black and white B-grade movies.

Right then. Plan C.
I tried to cut the tablet into smaller segments, but it was getting sorta crumbly by now, so I used the back of a spoon to pulverise it into a coarse powder which I then mixed into a paste with some particularly juicy portions of his favourite dog food.
This was further diluted in some more dog food and finally set down with all the flourish of Gordon Ramsey serving dinner to get an extra Michelin star.

Smudge was totally up for it and buried his snout in exuberant, snorting mastication.
Just inside Smudges  nasal cavity, and opening via tiny slits into his mouth, is a specialised group of receptor cells designed to detect pheromones known as Jacobson’s Organ ( or the vomeronasal organ). These scent receptors, unlike any others, do not communicate with the olfactory bulb, but with the part of the brain that coordinates sexual drive and other primitive emotions (specifically, the the amygdala and hypothalamus). Often when presented with the arousing aromas of that special  lady dog in heat, Smudge  will lift his head and curl his upper lip  back in ecstasy, to help expose the opening into Jacobson’s Organ.

Despite the fact it has been found in many animals, there remains quite a bit of controversy over the existence of a functional Jacobson’ Organ in humans, and although some studies claim to have detected one, most remain skeptical.
Which is just as well really, as I presume this organ has a lot to do with the reason Smudge likes to engage in a little ‘sniff butt’ dancing  when first meeting another dog.
Such circular tangos invariably end up with me having to untangle a macrame weave of leads from around the appendages of some complete stranger.
Just be thankful methinks, if humans had a more developed Jacobson Organ, this encounter could result in said stranger and I engaged in our own dance of butt sniffing.

Happy that I had finally outsmarted my furry little friend, I washed up the dishes and settled back for  a victory beer.
Returning a little later to find the bowl licked clean.
Except for, and I am not exaggerating here, a small pile of  coarse powder piled up on one side. Pill powder.

Smudge lay on the couch, enthusiastically licking his bottom.
Canis lupus familiaris….do not mess with the wolf.