Anyone out there have little kids and pets? Or little kids that want to help take care of pets? Does it ever end up being more work–or more of a mess–than it’s worth??? Bless their little hearts. They try, but sometimes they just don’t have the motor control required. Or rascally-ness gets the best of them. Either way …

Fido ends up getting a bath rather than water in his dog dish.

Mousie escapes from the cage and is nowhere to be found.

Or the fishies get a whole bottle of food dumped in–or starve to death!

Am I right?

Well, I finally figured out a way to take care of the last one on the list! Check it out!

You know those easy-snap pill dispensers for every day of the week? You can get one at the pharmacy for about a buck. For the fish, we use one with AM/PM compartments for each day, so our aquatic friends are sure to be fed twice: at wake-up time and at bed-time. Once a week (instead of every day!!!), I pinch and crumble just the right amount of fish food into the slots, and voila: a do-it-yourself system for my 7-year-old. All he has to do is snap open the right compartment (i.e., Wed, AM) and tap the pre-portioned food into the tank. Best of all, I can peek into his room and see whether the fish have been fed that day. Cool, eh?

(A word of WARNING: If you have fish and decide to do this, make sure you buy an allocated pill dispenser. If there is leftover residue from medication in the container, it could kill the fish. Not that I’d know…)