How to Make Pet Medication Simpler & More Effective with Compounding

Pets and medication aren’t always the best of friends. Medicine time in your home can mean lots of howling, scratching, and reluctance as your loved one goes above and beyond, sometimes quite literally, to avoid pills at all costs. Truth be said, most pets aren’t comfortable with you touching their mouth or the taste of the medication, and thus the habit to tuck tail and run. They may not budge even in the face of countless promises and treats, and that compromises your pet’s treatment plan and health overall. So what do you do when your pet is adamant about not taking medication? Compounding is the answer to make the process simpler for everyone, and more importantly, more effective. Here’s the full scope below: 

What is veterinary drug compounding? 

In the real world, most drugs are commercially produced and thus tend to be generic to serve a wide patient load. These mass-produced solutions don’t take into account the unique traits of the patient but instead offer a blanket fit. 

Compounded medication for pets, on the other hand, involves the specific customization of drugs by: 

• Altering
• Mixing
• And combining ingredients

In many cases, compounding can entail the combination of several drugs to meet individual pet needs. Compounding drugs is akin to the same way a tailor custom makes an outfit to match just your body measurements. 

How compounding makes pet medication simpler & more effective: 

Now that you have an understanding of what a pet medication pharmacy does, let’s move on to the heart of our topic today:

Compounding simplifies dosing

For many pet owners, medication may require the cutting or crushing of pills to achieve the desired dosage. This involves a lot of trial and error which not only makes the medication process harder but could also jeopardize your loved one’s health. 

The result could be medication errors. Overdosing, for instance, could result in uncomfortable symptoms that may be fatal while underdosing can increase the resistance of pathogens and thus rule out certain medications in the future. 

You don’t have to worry about incorrect dosing when you go with a pet compounding pharmacy, which can offer bespoke medication solutions in line with your loved one’s: 

• Age
• Body weight
• Gender
• Environmental factors and much more

When you compound drugs for your pet, you can achieve the proper dosage down to your furry buddy’s precise needs and thus hasten the recovery process. 

Taking out allergens

Some pets can be allergic to certain pet medications. As a result, this may rule out a more suitable drug solution in favor of a compromise that might not have the same efficacy levels. For example, lactose intolerant is quite common among canines. This is why your vet may have warned you against feeding your loved one milk and dairy products. 

Considering that lactose is widely used as a filler for many drugs, then this becomes quite a concern. Compounded medication for pets solves the allergy challenge by taking out problematic and nonessential ingredients such as: 

• Dye
• Gluten
• Lactose, etc. 

All in all, this will unlock a previous medication solution that was out of reach for your pet due to allergies. Moreover, it’s a double delight for pet owners as the elimination of certain expensive dyes and ingredients may also mean lower medication costs.  

Compounding improves compliance

Pets can’t stand the taste of certain drugs. Consequently, they are not too upbeat to carry on with medication once they realize it has that better aftertaste. Many pet owners result to hiding pills in their pet’s favorite foods or snacks, but this brings rise to several other problems, including:  

• Absorption inefficiency: For some drugs, a full stomach can reduce a drug’s absorption potential
• Capsules can break apart in food and release a bitter flavor, thus dissuading your pet from completing the dosage
• Some foods react adversely with medication. For example, calcium can negate the efficacy of some antibiotic drugs

Passing off drugs as food is therefore not ideal. The best way to improve flavor without the associated challenges above is through compounding. 

At the Bay Life Pet Compounding Pharmacy, we enhance tasting by incorporating your loved one’s favorite ingredients, including but not limited to bacon, tuna, chicken, and liver, thereby eliminating the risky business of masking drugs with food. This way, medication will always feel like a treat, and you say goodbye to more forceful – and stressful- interventions. As a result, this also means improved medication adherence and more positive health outcomes for your pet. 

It can enhance medication absorption

Medication can kick in and provide relief in a matter of hours or days, depending on factors such as dosage strength and route of administration. When medication takes a long time before its effectiveness sets in, your pet will continue to suffer under uncomfortable symptoms for longer than she should. 

By altering the dosage form, a pet medication pharmacy can improve not just its effective absorption rate but even compliance, more so if you’re loved one can’t be sold on oral medication. In cases where pets also have dysphagia (which is quite commonplace across canines) or where oral pills are not an option due to congenital disorders, compounding can also be the safer option. 

With oral medication also linked with one of the slowest rates of action onset among other delivery methods, a pharmacy can tap into faster absorption routes such as subcutaneous delivery techniques, among others that the compounding pharmacy will find ideal. 

Compound your pet meds with Bay Life today!

Do you have a pet that won’t take pills? Medication time doesn’t have to end up in fights with your furry – or scaly/feathery- best friend. Rely on a pet medication pharmacy such as Bay Life Compounding to streamline pet medication by improving taste, customizing dosage, improving administration, and taking out allergens that may be inflating pet medication unnecessarily. Contact us today for veterinary compounding services with a delicate and loving touch. We’ll have your pup, kitty, guinea pig, bird, and any other pet feeling better in no time!