Dear dog and cat friends,

This month I want to share with you what I call “Lizzie’s Pharmacy Tidbits.”  It is a lot of things that I have picked up from hanging around our hospital’s pharmacy, snooping and listening, and  - I admit it - looking for handouts from the nice people who work here.  It’s the sort of information that I think all of you need to tell your people!

1. When your people bring a prescription home from the vet to give to you, make sure they give you ALL of it.  Don’t let your humans keep a few pills back “to give you later in case the problem comes back” (or any such excuse for not giving you all of your meds, even if you’ve been very bad about taking them!). 

Number one, your vet prescribed a certain number of pills for a reason.  Make sure your humans understand - barking loud at them is a good way to tell them - that the best way to make sure that your problem does come back is to not give all of the medication. 

Number two, a few old pills six months later sure aren’t going to do you any good.

2. If you have pills that have to be split, don’t let your owners split them all at once, fer pete’s sake!  Split only what you need for a day or two.  A lot of pills lose their strength, or they get sort of mushy and soft, if you split them in advance.  And even the ones that look normal can be not as good for you all split up, because stuff from the air, like moisture, gets into a split pill a LOT faster than it does in a whole pill.

3. If your people actually believe those stupid ads that promise to save them a lot of money on their pet’s prescriptions by getting them on line and saying that “your vet won’t mind,” remind them to check a couple of things first:

(And trust me, your vet will mind, because on-line companies hurt small businesses very badly)

#1: Add the cost of shipping, handling, and other fees that are added to your order.

#2: Remember that many products, like Heartgard, don’t honor product guarantees if the medicine doesn’t come from your vet.  This is because many products sold by many on-line companies are not purchased legally.

#3: Always check the expiration date before you buy.  Some on-line products are cheap because they are near the expiration date.

C’mon...I am sure that a smart person like yours can figure out that a mail-order company can save money because it doesn’t have to train and keep on staff knowledgeable people who can help you whenever you need them.....or have available all kinds of medical stuff in case you have a problem, like a broken leg or an asthma attack....or even pay people to answer the phone....or to even make sure that they hire legal workers!

4. If you know that you are absolutely terrible about taking your medications (and you should hang your head in shame, you bad dog and cat, you!), give your poor frazzled owners a break and tell them about compounding pharmacies. 

These are special places where the pharmacists know how to make it easier to get medication into cats and dogs that scream, cry, bite, or fight to avoid their medicine.  They can take your pills and make them into a good-tasting liquid, like cheese or bacon or turkey or liver or...boy, am I getting hungry just thinking about it!  Or, - and this is really cool, especially for cats - they will make your pills into an ointment that can be rubbed into your ear and the medicine goes right into your blood!  Is that awesome, or what!  I listen through doors a lot at our hospital and I can tell you that a lot of people really like this - it is called “TD” or “transdermal” medicine.  We have a pharmacy right in Roselle that can make TD and good-tasting liquid medicines, and maybe you have one near you, too.  (But it costs your people more, so just try to be good about those pills, OK?)

Gotta go rest these hard-working typing paws now.  So until next month, this is your good friend Lizzie, working hard to keep all of my dog and cat friends updated on what they need to know to keep themselves healthy.