Ever have a hard time giving your pet, your kid or yourself medicine? Easy to understand; we don't like the taste. What's hard to understand is why medicine can't be made more appealing to the palate. There's someone with a solution–the compounding pharmacist.

Compounding medicine is the age-old art of preparing medicine to meet each patient's unique need. Is there a more unique need, or patient for that matter, than a sick animal, determined to reject any and all medicine?

A compounding pharmacist works in conjunction with doctors and veterinarians to solve these problems for their patients. Animals can be very difficult to administer medicine to, especially if the medicine doesn't come in the right dosage form or flavor.
The thought of a modern pharmacist compounding special medicine by hand to suit the discriminating animal might seem far-fetched, but not to the exasperated owner on the other end of that clinched mouth. For that reason, the compounding pharmacist is often called upon to assist veterinarians and pet owners in customizing medication regimens. To do so, he has a variety of flavoring agents and delivery devices not normally kept in pharmacies.

Compounding pharmacists are innovative, using beef, tuna, liver and chicken flavors, even cheese, molasses and peanut butter. To entice a stubborn animal, they might try flavors or aromas of anything from bubble gum essence to raspberries–known to tempt Iguanas. One pharmacist discovered that tortoises like bananas and found a macaw's penchant for angel food cake.

Dogs are considered easier to treat. Cats are more difficult, the exotics even more so, because their preferences are less known. But the award for the most difficult goes to birds. The pharmacists are willing to experiment until they produce a compatible medicine.

Their specialty frees patients and prescribers from the limitations of mass-produced medications that aren't available in the preferred strength, dosage form or flavor. They can modify a standard dose to a different level and prepare medicines without materials to which a patient is known to be allergic.

Working with a variety of forms and suspensions, they might come up with medicated drinking water or candy, whatever works. If they can obtain the chemical form of a discontinued medicine, they can bring it back to life. For an animal that needs more than one drug, they can combine them–a relief to any pet owner who has met the challenge of getting one pill down, much less several.

Compounding pharmacists welcome the challenge, because they know–with apologies to Mary Poppins–a spoonful of compounding does help the medicine go down.

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