Frugal Friday’s – Saving on Your Pets Medications

Saving on Fido’s Medication

Many families face the dilemma of being able to afford their animals medications. It can become a huge burden on pet owners especially as our animals age and start to require maintenance drugs such as arthritis medications. A few years back our hound dog blew out his knee and surgery was out of the question for us. I was laid off and my husband was starting college full-time in a matter of months so it just was not in the budget. After talking to several vets they advised me that the surgery would be pointless anyways given the size of our dog. We were informed that would only be a temporary fix and he would more than likely re-injure it later down the road and we would have wasted thousands of dollars.

Now we were faced with daily anti-inflammatory medications for our dog to keep the pain to a minimum and keep him mobile. Our veterinarian prescribed him Duramax for the pain and inflammation. I was happy to be able to give him something for some relief and I was shocked to find out it was going to cost me $100 a month. At the time it was going to be very difficult for us to afford each month. I started looking for ways to get it cheaper and I discovered that I could get it online from a pet pharmacy for 1/3 of the price as the vet. I was ecstatic.

26 of the 50 States require a veterinarian to give you a written prescription if asked so you can get your pets meds somewhere else. Most human pharmacies can actually fill your animals meds too and could be significantly cheaper than the vet. Some vets may give you slack if you ask for a written prescription because they are losing revenue. You have to research your states law to find out whether they are required to or not and go from there. Some states the laws are very vague but then other states have a very clear cut law on this. In general most vets are willing to do this even if not required by law because it is considered unprofessional conduct if they refuse to.

With some research you can save significantly on your animals medications. If you are going the route of online pharmacies obviously this needs to be done with caution to make sure you are not getting bad medications but there are plenty of reputable online pharmacies. Here is a link to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. This will help guide you in the right direction.