When pets aren’t feeling well, the technicians field a lot of calls from clients who want to give their pets some of their own medications. Most of the time, they are instructed not to do so. While frustrating, there is usually a good reason. Quite a lot of the prescription medications we use in veterinary medicine are, in fact, the same as the ones used in humans. However, not all are OK for pets and most of our over-the-counter medications are useless to dangerous if given to dogs and cats.
It’s important to remember that pets are not small humans and their bodies don’t handle things the same way. Just look at chocolate. Chocolate tastes amazing and even gives us a boost of serotonin to improve our moods. However, giving chocolate to a dog can lead to severe sickness and even death. Many drugs act the same way. Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is a very benign reliever of pain and fever in humans. In cats, a single dose can cause major damage to the blood cells which leads quickly to liver damage. In many cases, the first sign of toxicity is death.
Less worrisome than the toxicities is the fact that many drugs seem to have no effects on pets. Antihistamines are a common one. While many owners and even vets seem convinced that antihistamines like Benadryl seem to help pets’ allergies, there is little evidence to support this. Multiple studies have been done comparing antihistamines to sugar pills. In every study, the placebo pills were ranked just as effective as the actual antihistamines. So, they effectively did nothing to help the pets’ allergies.
The third issue we seem to have with drugs is variable absorption. About 20 years ago as more and more generic drugs became available, we noticed something interesting: Pets getting some generics showed little to no effects compared to the brand-name drugs. While humans would clear an infection with a generic antibiotic just as fast as the brand-name stuff, pets’ infections were un-fazed. Studies into this revealed that pets absorb certain medication differently than humans. Depending on where and how pills were manufactured, we could see only 30-80% of the drugs getting into the pet’s systems. So, veterinarians have had to keep track of what generic drugs have proven ineffective in their patients and avoid prescribing them. It has been frustrating for us as many of these generics are much cheaper for our clients compared to the original forms.
So, if we are looking to address the question in the title, the answer is “You can, but not all the time…”. I constantly recommend common in-home medications for pets for common problems. Things like antacids, acne pads, eye drops, and many other items are quite useful, cheap, and easy to get. That said, I still recommend you call the techs at your animal hospital to get advice before you reach into your own medicine cabinet.