#some of the flavor options at the compounding pharmact are wild

[inklingowl]

Ok, so speaking as someone who works in the pharmacy of an animal hospital, you can hide the bitter medicine taste a bit. After all, we have to convince pets to take the gross medicine and sometimes you need to jazz it up with a bit of compounding magic. For instance, take prednisolone. It's known to be bitter and gross, especially in liquid form, which is sometimes the only way people can get it into a cat. So compounding pharmacies flavor it. Most animal flavorings are what you'd expect for a dog or cat, like chicken, beef, bacon- but when it comes to really bitter meds we reach for the secret recipe: double chicken marshmallow. Sounds gross, I know, but the marshmallow supposedly helps cancel out the bitter so the chicken can shine through. I'll admit, I have not tried it myself to see firsthand. They do this for more than liquids too, compounded bitter block tylosin tablets used to smell like malted vanilla milkshakes. The new formula smells like honeycomb breakfast cereal. We keep a few compounding liquid flavors in house too, in case the pet can't wait for the meds to ship. The banana bread flavor smells absolutely fantastic. That stuff is concentrated though, like the vanilla extract of flavor enhancers. We measure it out in drops per mL of total liquid. I live in fear of dropping and shattering the tuna flavor vial like a terrible olfactory bomb.