It pays to shop around!
In the spring I noticed his coat was getting crappy. Bugged two vets but neither one was concerned. He started putting on weight but it coincided with a change in diet so everyone (except for me) assumed he was just fat and happy. By July he still hadn't blown his coat and my reg. dog clippers couldn't touch it so I went out and bought new fancier clippers - it still took hours! Paid way too much for the clippers so started really price-shopping for everything. Skip to September - seizures, seizures, seizures. Tests, tests, tests, worry, eliminating various theories...As he is large (~125 lb.) his doses of medication were also extremely high & expensive. Obviously as it was time-sensitive I couldn't shop around immediately. Between the phenobarbital, potassium bromide & valium I would be paying well over $100 a month for his meds. Luckily, after price checking online, I got the vet to match prices on phenobarb for 1/4 of his quoted price. Then I got him to match prices with valium (1/2d that bill). Now I just found potassium bromide for 1/4 of what I am paying. With all savings tallied up, I now pay $19.66 a month for pb and KBr. As I only need the valium during seizures and will be dropping the dose of pb over time, it will only get better! Incidentally, I also got my vet to price-match on Heartgard, once again saving over 60%. I guess it is a good thing that I have five dogs and two cats! I'm not so sure the vet would be as accomodating if I only had 1 or 2. I don't feel too guilty as between Sept. and Oct. I have paid the vet over $1500 for the seizures, tests for hypothyroidism (which, incidentally I was right about all along) and surgery to remove a tumor that popped up. All on poor Mojo.  I've dropped a couple hundred on the girls in that time also so I don't think my vet will be going out of business anytime soon!!! 
Sorry this was so long! I just wanted to let people know that it is okay to discuss prices with your vet. I save a couple hundred a year just on Heartgard. |
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| Wow they are some really BIG savings!! Thanks for posting I wouldnt have thought you could save that much so have never bothered to check.
I hope things are going well for Mojo.  |
| Thanks!
I actually brought him to our second vet today as he has been seizing since Thurs. and our main vet is out of valium tablets (only thing that seems to break the cluster). He was such a good boy!!! We were waiting for 1 1/2 hrs. as they had to double book us. He sweetly waited (although he REALLY wanted to play with a kitty and a puppy). This vet was able to give us the valium he needed (apparently it is on backorder so more diff. than normal to get). I put him in the car while I checked out and he had a seizure in the car.  Hopefully he'll get back to normal tonight. On the upside, I found that this vet charges waaaaaay less for the liquid valium. I was paying $2+/ml at our other vet and with this vet I paid around $.50/ml. Big difference!!! I think it may be a difference of generic vs. name-brand. Either way, still good to know! |
| I get Lola's Pheno at Costco. My vet wanted $16 for 15 pills. I bought 100 at Costco for $6. |
LolasMama wrote: I get Lola's Pheno at Costco. My vet wanted $16 for 15 pills. I bought 100 at Costco for $6.
Wow!!!!! How many mg / pill? Mojo gets 97.2 twice a day. I currently pay 17.77 for 100 pills. If yours are the same dose, that is a phenomenal price! |
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