By Dr. Marty Becker
Covetrus® is a corporate partner of Fear Free® 

I’m often introduced to audiences as America’s Veterinarian, a moniker that started when I did a seven-year run on The Dr. OZ TV show (Oprah called him America’s Doctor) as the veterinary medical correspondent.

I’ve been blessed over four decades of doing media to be able to communicate on behalf of our blessed veterinary profession to the public. I’ve also been fortunate to communicate to the profession. One guidepost I’ve always followed is to be honest with both audiences. Let me give you an example: I’ve practiced for 43 years, have written 23 books, penned a nationally syndicated veterinary/pet column for over 20 years, and appeared as the resident veterinary correspondent on ABC TV’s Good Morning America (GMA) for 17 years. You’d think that America’s Veterinarian would be the perfect pet parent with superbly trained pets, all pets at the peak of physical and emotional fitness, able to medicate, bathe, and trim their nails with ease. Uh ... no.

We have a new Pomeranian puppy, Quin’B, who is like a 3-year-old with ADHD and a chainsaw running around our house. Our dogs and cats are at their ideal body weight, but one of our horses is obese. We still struggle at times to trim our pets’ nails and have not mastered the art of magically getting prescriptions out of the bottle and into our pets’ stomachs without difficulty or defeat.

One of the very worst things a pet parent can feel is that they’re hurting their pet by trying to help him/her. This can include taking a pet with high levels of fear, anxiety, and stress to the veterinarian or wrestling with them to give them the medications prescribed by their family’s veterinarian.

Doing up to 24 trips per year to NYC to do GMA, I’d witness the Three Card Monty scam on the streets where the goal was to trick people out of their money. We’d try to mimic this with pets by giving them meds hidden in a treat. First pocket was nicknamed The Promise and given with no meds. The second pocket had the meds and was called The Deed. The last empty pocket was The Chaser. On paper this sounded good. And clients nodded along when we outlined the process for them. Only problem was, it didn’t work very well. So the process just went into roulette wheel of ways to try and get the medicine to go down including peanut butter, butter, cheese, marshmallows, hot dogs, baby food. Oh yeah, the old standby, stuffing it down their throat and blowing in their nostrils to make them swallow the prescription, which often lingered too long in the esophagus (how would you like to take a pill/capsule without water?).

The problems with these approaches are many:

1. Far too often the medicine doesn’t make its way to the pet’s stomach. How many times do pet parents find pills or capsules in the house or yard?
2. Far too often some or all of the medication ends up on the person/floor/walls and not in the pet.
3. Far too often when pet parents struggle to give medications they feel embarrassed or guilty, so rather than advising the veterinary office that they failed to give the medication as prescribed and need other options, they simply put the medication in the cupboard or drawer, and tell no one.

I’m almost 70 years old and my amygdala is filled with attempts by my mother to medicate me. Here’s my top two traumas:

1. Cod liver oil – Forget a “spoon full of sugar” nothing takes this taste out of your mouth.
2. Mercurochrome – Great idea to put some mercury-containing salts on a scratch. With its distinctive and persistent red color, I remember my dad called it “visible protection!”

When we started having children in the 1980s, I can still remember how great it was to have bubble gum flavored Amoxicillin. Both of our kids looked forward to being medicated. It’s past due the time when we need to have pets also look forward to being medicated or at least not feel like they’re going to be harmed in healing.

Over the past few years, I have completely changed my approach to prescribing medications and coaching pet parents in delivery. I first start by humbling myself, speaking truth, and telling pet parents:

1. It’s not easy to give most pets medications, especially oral ones. In fact, it’s not easy for veterinary healthcare professionals who’ve been in practice for many years. Myself included.
2. It’s very important that we get the prescribed medications into the pet in the right dosage over the correct period of time.
3. If you can’t give medications, don’t feel embarrassed or guilty as there are options including bringing the pet in for medication, having a house call veterinarian give the medications, or having us deliver longer-acting medications.
4. If you’ve had trouble giving your pets medications in the past and feel that you don’t want to risk having to force the meds into your pet, don’t want to have the pet fear you and diminish the bond, or experience safety concerns, we have a valuable new option for you: Compounded medications from Covetrus® Personalized Care Pharmacies.

I describe compounded medications like a human visiting the local ice cream or yogurt shop where you get to pick the flavor, toppings and preparation (two scoops of vanilla with hot fudge, a sundae, milkshake, smoothie). Except in this case, the pet can ultimately pick the flavor of the medication and how they want to take it (flavored tab, liquid, topical).

When appropriate for the pet, the pet parent can rely on the Personalized Care Pharmacies to recommend what’s proven to be the most popular flavors, or they can send different flavors for the pet to actually pick out the one they most like.

Why didn’t they have these options when I was a kid! 

About the author Dr. Becker is the founder of Fear Free®, which works to prevent and alleviate fear, anxiety, and stress in pets by inspiring and educating the people who care for them. Covetrus is a corporate partner of Fear Free.  

Covetrus® encourages the use of an FDA approved product whenever possible, within a valid veterinary-client-patient relationship (VCPR). However, we realize that in order to achieve a desired therapeutic outcome, a customized compounded preparation may be necessary. Covetrus Compounding Pharmacies, a fully PCAB accredited pharmacy with compliance to USP 795/797/800 standards along with a registered cGMP 503B outsourcing facility means you can be confident in the quality of every medication order.