The first one went down in a piece of cheese. The second was eaten around and left on the floor, and now your dog leaves the room when the cupboard opens.
Adolescent dogs are quick at this. One bad experience is enough for a dog to start checking everything you hand them.
Ask your veterinary practice first
Before you get inventive in the kitchen, find out what you are allowed to change. Some medication can be split, crushed or given with food and some cannot, and that is not a call to make at home.
Ask whether this medication comes as a liquid, a chew, or a smaller tablet.
Ask whether it can be split or crushed, and whether it can be given with food.
Ask whether a missed dose matters, and what to do if your dog spits one out.
Ask the practice to show you once, with your dog there. It is a fair thing to ask for.
Hiding it, properly
Make 3 identical parcels and give them in a row: 1 empty, 1 with the pill, 1 empty. The order is what does the work.
Use something your dog swallows whole rather than chews, like a meatball of wet food or cream cheese off a spoon.
Load the parcels in another room, out of sight and out of earshot of the packet.
Change the food before your dog changes their mind. A parcel that has hidden a pill twice is one they are already suspicious of.
Follow the last parcel with something better than the parcel, every time.
Handing it, instead of hiding it
Hiding works until it does not. A dog who will take a pill from an open hand has something more durable, and it gets built when nothing is wrong.
Sit on the floor with your dog loose rather than held. Feed 5 pieces of food, one at a time, from a flat hand.
Add a pill-shaped treat to the sequence, so an odd-shaped item in your fingers is ordinary.
Touch the side of your dog's muzzle, feed, and let go before they move away. 6 reps, twice a day.
Lift a lip, feed, stop. Later, place a treat in the side of the mouth by hand and follow it with 2 more.
30 seconds a session, on days when there is no medication to give.
Relaxation is trained as a behaviour in its own right, in short repeatable sets below your dog's threshold. That is what a 30 second set is for.
Working below the threshold at which your dog reacts is the condition for learning. If your dog turns their head away, the last step was too big.
Never force it
Do not pin your dog down, straddle them, or hold their jaw shut. Punishment-based approaches are associated with fear, avoidance and defensive aggression, and restraint sits in that territory.
You may get today's pill in that way. What your dog learns is that hands near their mouth are worth avoiding, and tomorrow is harder than today was.
Reward-based methods are what the veterinary behaviour guidance recommends for training and behaviour change. Cooperative care means your dog can move away, and you let them.
When it goes wrong anyway
If the pill comes back out, stop, put it away, and call the practice rather than trying 5 more times.
If your dog will not come to you at pill time, go back to paid handling on days with nothing to give.
If this is twice a day for weeks, ask the practice which form is easiest to give.
Write down what worked, so the next person giving it does the same thing.
Behaviour change is built from management plus reinforcement together. Here the management is asking for a liquid, and the reinforcement is 30 seconds of paid handling on an ordinary Tuesday.
Safety note
Call your veterinary practice, rather than working it out at home, if your dog will not take a course of medication. Do not crush, split or skip a dose without asking first. Get help now if your dog growls, snaps or bites as you approach their mouth. That needs your veterinarian and a qualified behaviour professional, and pain frequently presents as a change in behaviour rather than as obvious lameness.
Today's version, in one line: 5 pieces of food from a flat hand, 1 touch to the muzzle, and nothing else today.