Laughter as pup given fake pill whenever sibling get his daily medication

A video of an owner having to give one of their dogs fake medicine so he “doesn’t feel left out” when his dog sibling is given his medication has gone viral on TikTok, where it has received over 797,000 views.

A voice in the video, shared by @manwith2dogs, said their dog Tano (also known as Titan) suffers from hypothyroidism, a condition of having an underactive thyroid gland. “So every day he gets his medication inside this pill wrap,” the voice said.

“That one gets sad and jealous,” the voice said, as the camera pointed to another dog (called Barry) in the room.

“He starts ‘tippy tapping’ when I start preparing Tano’s meds.” So after giving Tano his medication, the owner prepares a “fake” medicine wrap for Barry.

You may be thinking the owner could just feed the pup a piece of pill wrap without putting a tablet inside it. “But Bear [Barry] needs to see me put in a tablet as well, so I fake it,” the voice in the clip said.

The footage then showed a pair of hands placing a tablet inside a small chunk of the pill wrap in front of Barry, before discreetly tossing the tablet to the side and sealing the wrap. Barry was then seen moving toward the hands to catch his pill wrap treat.

A caption shared with the post read, “Our new routine, so Barry doesn’t feel left out.”

The owner’s clever handwork appeared to do the trick for the dog. But would most dogs fall for the scheme? Potentially, according to one study, which provided evidence that pet dogs can distinguish between “TB [true belief] and FB [false belief] scenarios.”

In a July 2021 study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, dogs were allowed to retrieve food from one of two opaque buckets after witnessing “a misleading suggestion” by a human (the communicator) who held either a TB or FB about the location of food.

The dogs in both the TB and FB groups were exposed to the initial hiding of food, its displacement by a second experimenter and the communicator’s misleading suggestion regarding the empty bucket.

The study found that, on average, “dogs chose the suggested container significantly more often in the FB group than in the TB group and hence were sensitive to the experimental manipulation.”

The study’s findings raised the possibility that “pet dogs attribute to human informants, in the absence of any training, not only different knowledge states, but also different intentions and beliefs.”

Several users on TikTok were amused by the dog in the video, with some saying they have to follow a similar routine with their own pups.

User @mel_5101 wrote: “Aww…Care Bear being the supportive little brother. If Tano goes through it, so is Bear…”

Jen said: “My pup gets a bedtime treat because she sees me taking my meds and thinks they’re treats. I keep a bag of treats in my nightstand now.”

Ingrid wrote: “My dogs do this too. My one gets thyroid meds and the other gets an empty pill container lol.”

Trace said: “Honestly this is great exposure for him anyway in case he ever needs to take a pill so win win.”

Newsweek has contacted the poster for comment via TikTok. This video has not been independently verified.

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