Let the Label Be Your Guide

I must admit that I am often in despair over how reluctant pet owners can be about utilizing pharmaceuticals. Sometimes, it’s for a legitimate reason: there’s a bout of hand-to-hand combat with each dose or a daily manhunt to locate that wily pet buried deep in his hidey hole. Under these circumstances, any pet owner would be reluctant to engage. An animal of any size, no matter how tame, can transform into a terrifying adversary when he does not want his medicine. But sometimes the caregiver comes back with some half-baked nonsense, like “Three capsules a day just seemed like it was going to be too much for his system,” or “I had a different cat years ago that only used one syringe of this medicine,” or “The tablets are so large, it seemed like too high of a dose.” It’s especially frustrating when pet owners don’t want to give the tranquilizer pill that we needed in order to take their pet’s x-ray because “it made him really sleepy.” Yes, sleepy. That is, in fact, the desired outcome.

Medicines for pet animals, unlike most of those prescribed for humans, are dosed according to body weight. It’s not at all unusual for our patients to vary from 3-4 pounds to over 100 pounds on an average day, and it would be wildly inappropriate to use the same amount of medicine on those two animals. Furthermore, each of the pharmaceuticals prescribed by your vet behaves in its own specific way. Some of them are gone from the body 6 or 8 hours after ingestion. Those medicines absolutely must be given 3 or 4 times a day, else they will not perform their function. It would be a mistake, therefore, to give that pill at 12-hour intervals because you somehow surmised that anything more frequent would amount to an overdose. Lastly, it is a gross misconception to think that large pills somehow contain more medicine than small ones. Oversized pills are a nuisance, no doubt about it, but they are not carrying a massive payload of chemicals. It’s just more expensive to produce those tiny, sleek, tinted, coated ones, and the chunky tablet is often more cost-effective.

Certainly, if you get your prescription back to the house and something about it makes you uneasy, don’t hesitate to call the doctor for clarification. Your vet’s office will be extremely eager to root out any error that may have transpired in the vial-filling or label-printing process. This is especially important if you are obtaining the medication from an outside pharmacy. After the instructions have been confirmed, however, please, for the love of science, just administer the product as it was intended. Yes, even if it makes him sleepy before his vet appointment.

Giving your pet the prescribed dose and frequency of medicine is always the most reliable course of action. It therefore pains me to have to share with you that our next piece outlines how your pet could, under very specific circumstances, need an individualized prescription that is lower than the standard dose.

Dr. M.S. Regan