Byron Animal Clinic offers a full-service pharmacy on site to assist with your pets medical needs. We do this for the convenience of our pet owners. We strive to provide a worry-free, one stop shopping experience. As a small business, we cannot compete with large human chain pharmacies or online pet pharmacies. These companies have tremendous purchasing power and sell far more prescription medications than we ever could. As such, they can reduce their prices based on volume of sales. As mentioned, we cannot compete with this – nor will we try to.
Why buy your pet’s prescriptions from us? In one word – SAFTEY.
Our pharmacy carries veterinary approved and labelled drugs. This means that these drugs have been specifically tested on animals for both safety and efficacy. By selling these drugs we support current and future research into the development of new veterinary approved and labelled drugs. If we choose to sell cheaper human generics (when available), we are not supporting pet specific research and development.
Veterinary approved and labelled drug manufacturers also provide support to the pet owners whose animals use these drugs. In some cases, there are guarantees of efficacy or palatability. In other cases, there is financial support in the event of serious side effects. This level of support is not available for cheap, human generic drugs.
Our staff is trained in veterinary pharmacology. Human pharmacists can fill veterinary prescriptions but few are trained in veterinary pharmacology. Often they will not understand the doses or potential side effects.
Online veterinary pharmacies can be suspect in their sourcing and supply of veterinary medications. Many veterinary drug manufacturers do not sell drugs to online pharmacies. This means that online veterinary pharmacies:
- Source their veterinary drugs from other countries and smuggle them in
- Source their veterinary drugs from “knock-off”, generic companies who make veterinary drugs of questionable quality, safety, and efficacy – designed to look like veterinary approved and labelled drugs. Many of these are made in China or Mexico.
If you use online veterinary pharmacies, we encourage you to call the manufacturer of the drugs you purchase and ask them if they made the product you have purchased or not. They can confirm this by checking and verifying the lot number on the product packaging.
All this said, we are willing to write your pet a prescription so you can attempt to save money on your pet’s prescription medications. There is a fee for this service – so you may have to factor that fee into your cost savings.
At Byron we can provide veterinary approved and labelled drugs, some human generics, as well as compounded medications. Compounded medications are prepared specifically for your pet by a veterinary approved Compounding Pharmacist. These drugs are made when:
- there is no appropriate dose size for your pet available
- the medication tastes bad and they try to make it taste better
- the medication can be made into a liquid instead of a pill
- the medication can be made in a trans-dermal gel instead of a pill
- we need to get creative to get medications into your pet somehow
Compounded drugs are a bit more expensive and often require time to special order for your pet.
If you have any questions regarding our pharmacy or prescriptions for your pet, please call (519) 472-3770.