Online Pet Pharmacies: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The FDA is the government agency that regulates manufacturing and distributing of prescription medications for both you and your pets. They have created a program, BeSafeRx, to create awareness of the dangers of buying prescription medications online. With internet shopping being “THE” way to shop these days due to convenience and the ability to price shop easily, more and more of our clients are shopping for their pets medications online. Because of this, we have added an online pharmacy to our website. The prescription medications, prescription foods, and other products are approved by our veterinarian and are shipped directly from the same distributor we receive our products from. Many times the online pharmacy, VetSource, offers coupons and rebates allowing us to be competitive with large chain pharmacies online.
Many of these large chain pharmacies are obtaining their products in questionable ways, since MOST veterinary drug manufacturer limit the sale of their products to licensed veterinarians. More importantly, drug manufacturers only guarantee products directly from a veterinarian. In the past we have had a dog test positive on a heartworm test, who was current on his heartworm prevention and the manufacturer of the product paid for the dogs heartworm treatment, which was around $800. All because the pet owner had purchased the heartworm prevention from a licensed veterinarian. If the pet owner had been purchasing prevention from another online pharmacy, they would not have covered the pets treatment. Another problem with buying from some online pharmacies is short dating of the product. You may buy 6 months worth of heartworm medication and it expire in 3 months. When medications are handled by the wrong people they are not always handled properly. Some medications must be refrigerated to ensure quality. Many of these large chains buy medications from overseas, where there is not the strict regulations we have here in America.
Don’t take chances with your pets medications. Buy from your local veterinarian or from their websites. Ask you veterinarian for rebates and coupons, we want to help, I promise.
Wag More, Bark Less,
Dr. Macie
