Can You Buy Pet Medication Without Vet Prescription in 2020?
The nice thing about pets is this; you know they love you, just as much as you love them. And you know it even if they can’t voice their affections like you can. This is especially true of dogs and cats. Any time your pet falls ill or develops an ailment, you’re going to want to move quickly to see to it they get the relief they deserve. When it comes to prescription meds, the assumption that a prescription will be needed the same way it would be for your Rx medication is usually correct. However, it is true that when you buy pet medication you don’t always need a prescription for it.
So the question then becomes - which pet medications can be purchased without a prescription, and which pet medications always need a prescription? And once that’s determined, many pet owners will want to know if all this talk of better prices when ordering pet medications from Canada is accurate. Medications of ALL sorts are increasingly expensive these days, and anyone who finds a means of saving some money on them will take advantage of it when they buy pet medication 2019.
Let’s take a look at all of that here today.
Prescription Almost Always Needed for UTC Pet Meds
The far-reaching answer to this question is that yes, you will almost always need a veterinarian’s prescription to purchase any Rx medication from pharmacy when you buy pet medication. Perhaps we should qualify that by saying you’ll need a prescription if you’re buying from a reputable online pet pharmacy. We will go ahead and assume that you won’t be taking chances with your pet’s health, and therefore you’ll do some digging to make sure that you are dealing with a reputable pet pharmacy online.
You can look at it from the other perspective too; a quality online pet pharmacy will be insisting on a vet’s prescription because it refuses to dispense medication on the chance that it will be wrongly administered. If a well-meaning but misinformed pet owner finds some incorrect information online or elsewhere and follows up on it with the wrong medication for their pet, the results could be disastrous.
Plain and simple, you don’t want that happening to your pet, and the pharmacy doesn’t want that either. And yes, liability has a lot to do with that but on a more simple and sincere level, we’d like to think that they wouldn’t want your pet to suffer.
If they’re not of that way of thinking, they’re not a reputable online pet pharmacy and they’re DEFINITELY not the type of pharmacy you want to be getting your pet meds from – even if they’d agree to allow you to buy pet medication without a prescription.
OTC Pet Meds: No Prescription, No Problem
You can, however, buy pet medication without a prescription if it is an OTC (over-the-counter) non-prescription product. The good news is that the OTC designation applies to most flea and tick control medications, most heartworm prevention and other deworming tablets, some topical applications to treat skin disorders, and some medicated shampoos.
Generally speaking, all other products that you can buy from an online pet pharmacy – and especially any type of antibiotic or antiviral medication or any type of medication delivered by an injection will require a veterinarian’s prescription when you buy pet medication from them. And – as we laid out quite clearly above – you really shouldn’t want it to be any other way!
Buy Pet Medication from Canada: Believe the Hype?
It’s true that ever greater numbers of Americans are ordering prescription pet medications from Canada when they’re too expensive locally. In much the same way as it is for all prescription medications, there are efficiencies in the supply chain and a lack of government interventionism in Canada that allows pharmacies there to offer the exact same branded and generic medications for significantly less than they cost in America.
So yes, when you buy pet medication in 2019 from Canada you can – and should – expect to pay less for it. Take a look at this list of the most popular pet medications that are also ones you can order from World Pet Express WITHOUT a veterinarian’s prescription. For the best prices AND have them shipped right to your door:
Keep in mind that if you are purchasing these products after diagnosing your pet’s ailment on your own, it is always advisable that you discuss your intended course of treatment with your veterinarian. You can still trust that the medication is safe to administer, but it may be that the medication itself OR the dosage of it you’re administering won’t be as effective as you thought it would be – or effective at all.
In many cases, even a brief chat over the phone with your veterinarian will suffice in these cases.
We’ll conclude here today by saying that when you buy pet medications online that do require a veterinarian’s prescription, you will not always be required to send the original prescription like you would for a doctor’s prescription you’re having filled for yourself. Most quality online pet pharmacies will accept a scanned copy of the prescription sent digitally with the order.
All the more reason to buy your pet medications online if you find there’s a much better price to be had, and more often than not there is!
