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It can be tricky getting them to take their meds
One of the latest health scares has been over a strain of meningitis that’s killed multiple people. According to WebMD, the meningitis originates from a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts. Compounding is the practice of putting more than one type of medication in a pill, or basically changing the medication in some way from its original formula.
How is this relevant for the pet owner? Compounding is a common practice in pet medications. Before you worry: the meningitis came from a human medication for back pain and it seems the authorities have gotten it under control, so the purpose of my article is not to alert you that your pets are at risk from this strain. My purpose is to look at the practice of compounding in veterinary medicine.
Anyone who’s heard about the meningitis and its source might be concerned about the general practice of compounding, and once they learn that it’s common for pet medications, want to know more about it. The reason why compounding is so common in pet medications is quite simple: it can be hard to get pets to take their medicine.
If your cat or dog needs multiple medications, it’s much easier to have them all in one pill. I’ve found it especially difficult to feed cats pills, so compounding could be useful if I had more than one pill I had to give to my cat. Where compounding is most common in pet medication, however, is in flavoring. Many pet medicines are marketed as flavored, to make them more appealing to pets.
By its strictest definition compounding is just an alteration of the medicine from its original formula. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there is more than one type of medication in the pill. Flavoring the pills to make them more palpable (for pets or for humans) or dissolving the pills in liquids to make them easier to administer are all types of compounding. So when I was a kid having problems learning how to swallow pills, and I’d open gel caps and pour the powder inside into my Dr. Pepper, that was a very basic (and not at all professional) form of compounding.
Dr. Ann Hohenhaus, the veterinarian writing on the topic for WebMD, advocates cautious use of compounding. She says that many times her job wouldn’t be possible without it; she’s encountered some animals that just won’t take their medicine unless it’s been flavored or altered in some way. But she thinks that using compounded medications should be approached with care: compounding pharmacies are not regulated by the FDA (though I wonder if they’ll be now, after the meningitis outbreak).
If you want to use a compounded medicine, be sure to talk to your vet about it. Although I’m all about cheaper meds, be careful about cheap compounds: sometimes they’re produced in bulk, and that’s when ingredients can get messed up. If you have any concerns about compounded medication, or the safe compounded medications are too expensive for you, don’t despair.
Although compounded medications make things easier, in most cases it’s not impossible to get your pets to take their unaltered pills. It’s especially easy for dogs; you just have to wrap up the pills in a bribe. I often use sliced cheese, or this summer when we had a lot of cherry tomatoes, I’d insert a pill (when I needed to give my dog Benadryl) into the center of one. For tips on getting your pets to take their medicine, check out my post here.
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