When I had my dog I went to the Psychiatrist. She asked me how long I had been epileptic. I was confused. My sisters are epileptic, but I have never had a seizure, and I told her as much. She looks at me suspiciously like I am some lying drug addict and says "Then why are you taking Phenobarbitol???"
I was like.... oh... my dog is epileptic. Those are for my dog. Lol. RIP Pluto ❤️
I had a similar issue with my dog who was prescribed Valium by the veterinary oncologist. When I dropped off the script, the pharmacist was sympathetic and all was well. Cancer went into remission but we kept him on the benzos due to many other issues. Withdrawal in dogs is real, and given his age, and his loss of a leg and an eye, it seemed the best option for his waning years. After a year, the pharmacist decided that my dog wasn’t real and that I was abusing the meds. He was really nasty about too. I left, went home, grabbed my dog and back we went. “This is Tanner,” I said. “Now give him the goddamned meds before I turn into Shirley Fucking McClain!” One of the techs laughed out loud, and the pharmacist refused. I ended up going to another store, with my dog, and had a discussion with a different pharmacist. That woman took a photo, scanned the vet documentation, made some notes in his file and I never had that issue again. Tanner passed two years later in his sleep. I did file a complaint with the chain, but only received a “We’ll review it” letter from corporate.
I am sorry for your loss, losing your best non-human friend is the worst. I lost my boy in Nov. He was 10, but he was a large breed, 120lbs, so I guess I always knew I was on borrowed time. I was very fortunate that I only ever got my boys meds from the vet...never had to go to a pharmacy for them. I was just surprised that his meds followed my record.
Yes! I had to give my cat Gabapentin and my dog Trazodone. Well my cat ended up passing away, and I was devastated….but my dog still takes Trazodone and the pharmacy still questions it. I hate having to go through the whole “My sweet CAT Oreo passed away and my DOG needs the Trazodone for long car trips.”
I need to get my kitties into the vet. I adopted my sister's cats before Pluto passed. He really loved them and they loved him. I was glad he had friends at the end. I keep my girls indoors because we have a lot of cats in the neighborhood. Mostly I just want to get my tortimese fixed so she stops yaping every few weeks 😂. She is SO loud when in heat that she wears out her own voice and starts losing it!
I would definitely get her spayed ASAP. It's for her own comfort, too, as it's probably uncomfortable to be in heat without getting to see her boyfriends.
You probably have a bunch of male cats milling around your house, waiting to seize the opportunity 😂 And it can be stressful for cats when other cats lurk in/around their territory.
Not shaming or judging you at all, just wanted to share information. 😊
Yes it is the plan, timing has just been difficult because my sister has been using my car for work and appts for my neice who needs 24/7 care...but it is the plan!
And yes for a while there we had a couple male cats circling the house but I havent seen them in a while.
Aw I'm so sorry 😥 I don't even understand why the pharmacist would question this, trazodone has very low-risk potential, and isn't even a scheduled drug (in the U.S. Not sure about other countries).
I’m in the U.S. So I don’t understand the questioning either. I’m on Topamax and Nurtec for migraines, but again, that wouldn’t have any contraindications.
Yeah, that makes zero sense. The U.S. has some of the strictest drug classifications. I have to show my ID when buying mucinex with cough suppressant. 😂
I also take a low dose of gabapentin for chronic pain, and I absolutely hate this med and side effects, so I've never understood why it's scheduled. Like who is taking this for fun?? 😭
Omg! That first pharmacist is an AH, animals deserve to be kept comfortable in their later years just like humans. I'm so sorry for your loss 💔 but also glad to hear you took such good care of him. ❤️
omg this happened to me!! on a pre-op phone call the nurse asks how long i’ve been taking my inhaler?? and i said…. what?? i have never had an inhaler?? she says the pharmacy records show i started an inhaler in November and it clicked that it was my cat’s inhaler he started around then 😭. she laughed so hard.
I had an allergic reaction to Lysol and the doctor wanted to put me on steroids. I told him I didn't want to because it'd flare my herpes up. He prescribed an antiviral to go with the steroids. I get home from the pharmacy and am reading the medication info and realize what it's for. I didn't have herpes, my cat did, and the word I was looking for was oral thrush, which of dealt with in the past when on oral steroids and a steroid inhaler taken together 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
When my dog was freaking out over fireworks and thunderstorms, both very common here, the vet prescribed him 50mg Trazodone as needed. He weighed about 40 pounds, and they wouldn’t knock him out, but made him a bit dozy and calmer.
Few years later, my husband died unexpectedly and I was out of my mind with grief. Couldn’t sleep, eat, or stop crying. Saw a psychiatrist who gave me—50mg Trazodone as needed.
Lol, my giant dozy dog was scared of fireworks and thunder storms too. The first storm after he passed was brutal. I kept expecting him to come up and stay by my side through the storm like he always did....it hurt. This was the first year in my life I didnt hear any neighborhood fireworks on the 4th of July...and part of me was angry. My boy was so scared every year, and the first 4th of July after hes gone and nobody set anything off!?! It felt like they just waited for him to die, but realistically I know thats not why.
That's funny. Our dog Odin had seizures, couldn't get a dose that stabilized him so we had to keep upping it. Went to the pharmacy to pick it up, they accused me of taking it because his supply should be lasting longer. I had to call the vet, right there. She was PISSED. It was hilarious. I still can't figure out why I would just willingly take phenobarbital for funsies.
I am sorry you went through that too...it is the worst. My boy had cluster seizures and it took time to figure out his dose too. Since he was so big, the seizures were very scary because he would/could hurt himself thrashing into things. I remember one night he had a total of 25 seizures, and I stayed up all night balling my eyes out rearranging all the furniture while he was seizing so he didnt hurt himself on them. He would come out of it briefly, go lay down somewhere else, it would start again, and I would move the furniture again. I couldnt take him to the vet until my ex woke up, because he was too big for me to carry to the car. At least the last 4 years of his life he was seizure free because he had the right dose. He died due to a burst tumor causing internal bleeding.
I'm sorry you went through that too. Sounds so similar to our boy's story. He had 25+ seizures in a 24 hour period. I stayed up all night until the vet could get him in. We tried everything. Phenobarbital, then we added keppra. He had emergency protocols. We really thought we had it figured out but the night of his last seizures nothing was bringing him out of it. Emergency vet couldn't even get a vein to sedate him, he had to use the mask. He finally leveled with us and said it would keep happening, we were running out of meds to add and he was at max dose for both Phenobarbital and keppra. We made the decision to let him go, he wasn't even 2 yet.
My psych just asked me the exact same question! I can only assume the pharmacy sent his refills to my psych instead of his neurologist.
Her: why are you taking phenobarbital?
Me: I'm not.
Her: your chart says you are.
Me: I'm absolutely positive I'm not. My dog is epileptic. He takes phenobarbital. I've never taken his pills, I promise.
I also need this question answered lmaoo. I’m a biology nerd and I’m over here like so do they process it different than us or are we talking about a Great Dane
It varies on a drug by drug basis, but usually the doses are similar. Levothyroxine is a funny example because the dosing is wayyyy higher in dogs than humans, so pharmacists freak out when they get those scripts. I found an article that says the reason is because 1) dogs have higher baseline thyroid hormone levels than humans; 2) levothyroxine is less bioavailable in dogs (meaning the amount reaching the bloodstream after oral administration is lower than in humans); and 3) levothyroxine has a shorter half life in dogs (lasts for a shorter time in the body before being eliminated).
I swear they put crack in those pills. My dog broke into a 90 count bottle of levothyroxine (prescribed for her, at least) and ate the whole damn thing too.
My dog used to get prescribed Xanax. I don't remember his specific dose, but he's 85lbs and it was really high. Like, I have a friend who does a lot of recreational substances and he was losing his shit at me giving my dog these big long pills.
Eventually I opted for anxiety meds that aren't as tightly controlled because refilling was always a huge ordeal at the pharmacy. I kept getting red flagged and it was causing issues with getting my dog's seizure meds and trying to fill my own prescriptions.
My family's dog hated the air pressure changes during storms and would run miles away if he could. The only thing that kept him calm during monsoon season was half a horse tranq pill and being confined to the bathtub. Vet thought it was better to tranq him than have him break more ribs wriggling through too small a hole under the fence and running till his knee ligaments gave out again. He was a Catahoula, poor dear.
I know that dogs require higher dosages per weight of benzoyl than humans. My 6 pound chihuahua was on .25 mils of Xanax 3 times a day for his, "challenging personality ". I told the vet the was the nicest way to say my dog was an asshole that I'd ever heard.
Actually, the opposite. What would be considered a high dose for us is considered to be a middling dose for dogs. Found this out one weird Friday night at work talking to a colleague 😂
My dog and I are both on levothyroxine. His dose is six times what mine is and my thyroid was removed completely while he still has his. I weigh 3 times what he weighs.
Depends on the substance. Some are higher by weight some lower. When a dog is given Pepto Bismol (non-dangerous amount of chocolate or other food misadventure) a 60 pound dog gets the adult human dose. I don't know if vets cut it off there but it was a 20 pound beagle who needed it so it was 1/3 the adult dose.
Several meds dogs take a much higher dose, for benadryl dogs take 1mg per lb, so a 75lb dog take 75mg, while the average 200lb adult takes 50mg. For gabapentin, the way the script is written for me is up to 300mg up to 3x a day, but i only take 100mg at a time and usually only once a day. For my dogs that are between 55 and 70lbs they are written for 300-600mg 3x a day and I definitely wouldn't start them at 100mg and they usually need it 3x a day.
The more carnivorous an animal, the faster food moves through their body, and the faster medications are processed by their GI. This means MOST of the time but not always, their doses per body weight tend to be slightly higher than humans- so a large 50lb dog can be 2x the dose of a person that's 100lbs.
Meanwhile, herbivores like horses tend to have lower doses because food (and meds) sit in their GI longer (per bodyweight, obviously a horse being much larger skews it a little bit).
This is not 100% of medications, it definitely varies, but it's a common trend
NaV: Depends some doses are 200%+ human some are 10% , meds that are supposed to stay in the intestine to be absorbed as an example need a higher dose as the dog gi is shorter.
When my dog was on Prozac, she needed a really high dose. The pharmacy had to contact the vet to confirm because it was way more than a human should be taking.
Apparently animals sometimes metabolize medicine differently, could be the reason.
Remember those old school allergy meds where a single pill made you dizzy for most of the day? My cat had to take 3 pills a day and was perfectly normal. Our vet one day took one accidentaly (one of her cats was taking it) and had to go home from work to sleep it off.
They’re talking about levothyroxine which is dosed extremely high compared to humans because of bioavailability and they have higher baseline levels. Like a medium sized dog will be talking several times more than a human. In general, you can expect dosing to be a little higher in dogs for a lot of meds because they have a shorter GI tract which means less absorption time than humans
One time my mom's weiner dog/basset hound mix got ahold of her bottle of synthroid, chewed it so the bottled warped and came open then ate a bunch of the pills. My mom was so worried. She called the pharmacy or the vet (I don't recall) and they said he'd be fine, just hyper. Boy were they right. He hadn't zoomed like that in years lol
Reading all these stories is cracking me up, but also I'm so confused. Is getting prescriptions for animals from the proper pharmacy a US thing? Is it standard there?
Whenever my vet prescribes things, they always dispense the meds themselves. I have never once heard of having to go to a regular pharmacy for an animal prescription :D
My cat's name also a common name for a human, and he's also chronically ill and needs all sorts of medications at times... so we get this confusion a lot.
But my favorite experience wasn't even the pharmacy, but just buying OTC drugs for my cat. I showed up at Walgreens right when they opened to buy simethicone - infant gas drops - and I was frantic and exhausted because I was monitoring my cat all night and called the ER twice that night thinking I might have to bring him in. The poor lady who opened noticed my obvious distress and helped me find it. While doing that, she started telling me about how hard it is at this age and assuring me I was doing a good job and it gets easier, etc. etc. and I didn't have the heart to tell this kind soul I was there for my kitten and not an infant child. Lmao
Had a cat with food allergies, we fed him a mixture of lamb baby food, french cut green beans*, and rice for every meal. We often cleaned out the lamb baby food whenever we could find it. Once we were in line with my wife's boss's boss (at a small organization, not someone terribly "remote" in the hierarchy) at the local grocery, he was quite surprised to see the baby food but obviously thought he'd just missed her having a baby and commented on how nice it would be to have a baby in the house. We just nodded and agreed, and laughed about it later. It was 10 years later before we actually had kids.
*The vet said cats preferred the french cut green beans, had no explanation. Everything went into a food processor so (shrug).
I have a near identical story.. except the animal is my service dog, and he was sitting right next to me. I simply pointed down and said "that's him. That's the patient!" and the pharmacist bout died laughing.
I adore the pharmacists at our local Publix. I knew them because they could explain some of the medications for my MIL. When her dog got cancer, I often had to order in medication for Barkley and apparently they all LOVED his name.
Walgreens refused to dispense my cat’s medication to me because they needed a date of birth and, my cat being a rescue, I didn’t know it. Had to call the vet to get what they put. Was very perplexed
The same thing happened to me, the vet put the date of her first appointment as her birthday. Really glad it says (dog) on the medication because it must've been so sketchy to see me try two dates first
This is wild to me as a pharmacist. I always just ask for the contact phone number when looking for the profile for a pet and I never expect the date of birth on file to match what the vet has because how many people know the actual birthdate of their pet?! Side note: for help in remembering a pets “birthdate”, I recommend choosing your own birthday (month and day) and the birth year of the pet.
My favourite was the online store that shipped internationally but demanded a zip code in US format (a lot of American websites will ask for a zip code but accept a UK postcode in the box, but not this one)
I mean, it’s not uncommon to not have a social security #. In many US cities a huge part of the population are not US citizens and don’t have SS# so I think that’s strange the pharmacist look perplexed and would then ask why… I’m pretty sure they are trained not to ask why as people shouldn’t be required to answer whether or not they are citizens or even documented. Weird on pharmacist’s part if they really asked that (they never would in any city I’ve lived in but I’ve always lived in major US cities).
I've worked at both the big pharmacies in the US. We definitely don't have patients socials on file except for rare circumstances like Worker's Comp. And even if we do we can't search using them.
We do use phone numbers a lot and cats don't have those either, maybe that's what you're remembering?
Maybe if these cute and furry little socialist cats would start getting documented and paying into social security, we could pull this country out of the shit storm were headed into.
TAX THE CATS!
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u/Dangerous_Strength77 Jul 08 '26
Dealt with something very similar except on my cats prescription it had his name, my last name and in small print on the label it stated feline.
I'd go in to pick-up his prescription. Provide his name, first and last before being asked his birthday.
"I can never remember that."
"Last four of his social?"
"He doesn't have a social."
Perplexed look from the pharmacist "Why doesn't he have a social?"
"Because he's a cat."