Some of our adventures are exploring places. Some of our adventures are navigating day-to-day life here in Panamà.

Bringing two dogs to Panamà also brings some additional responsibility. With our two seniors, who both take medication, that meant finding veterinary care, as well as the medicines they needed. I was able to bring a 60 day supply with me for most medications, but for one I was only allowed to get a 30 day supply (thank you, US pharmacy rules). My first priority when we arrived was finding that medicine within 30 days.

An extra challenge was that the boys were under a home quarantine for the first 40 days after arrival, which meant they couldn’t go out except for extenuating circumstances. Our doxie has a heart murmur, so he requires two medications for that – one was the 30 day one.

It took contacting many vet pharmacies, and an impromptu visit to a local vet to find out that the medicine my dog needed was actually available as a human medication (as was cheaper than the vet version). What’s more, the human medication is available over the counter. The best part? The vet didn’t even charge me for the visit, because she “didn’t do anything”. But the peace of mind it brought me was priceless. It gave me the first win; I could find the right care for our dogs.

I realized the biggest issue was my underlying assumption that medication that needed a prescription in the U.S. also needed one in Panamà. That was a faulty assumption in most cases.

I was a little nervous the first time I went to a farmacia and asked for the doxie’s medication (Enalapril 5 mg). Could it really be that easy? The pharmacist didn’t bat an eye, and just confirmed the dosage. The cost, with my pensionado discount, was $6.20 for a 30 day supply. I’d paid $55.00 for the same medication back in the U.S.

Once I found out most of the medicines were readily available, it just became a matter of finding out which pharmacy (human or pet) carried the medicines the boys needed. Vetmedin, the doxie’s other heart murmur medication? It’s Pimocard here, and the cost is $28.00 for a 20 day supply vs $60 in the U.S. A metaclopramide suspension, needed for our JRT with GERD, cost $75 a bottle in the US that lasts about a month. Here, there’s a formulated product available for $9.00 that lasts two weeks.

We’ve been so pleased with the veterinary care. Our vet is a wonderful woman who makes house calls to the apartment for $30/visit (not including cost of vaccinations). When our JRT was having tooth pain (literally, one of his teeth fell out of his mouth!), we called her on WhatsApp and she walked us through what we needed to do next. At no charge.

When the JRT needed his teeth cleaned, she came to visit us to get a blood sample. We dropped him off at her clinic the days where she cleaned his teeth and extracted three more teeth that were bothering him. Total cost: $80.

Last week, both boys came down with a stomach bug. Our poor JRT was up all night for two nights in a row (I’ll spare you the details). The doxie came down with it the next day. It was a miserable 24-48 hours for all of us. Again, WhatsApp came through again – texted the vet. She told me what medications to get at the vet pharmacy – no prescriptions needed. Cost of the medicine? $20.00. The boys were back to normal within 48 hours.

Everything veterinary care related has been so straightforward, and so much easier than I thought it would be.

As much as I recognize that we have moved to another country, and as much as I tell myself that things are different here, I’m finding that there are so many underlying assumptions that need to be challenged. The dog medicine is a good example of this. All the medicine the boys take require prescriptions in the U.S., and my underlying assumption was that it would be the same here. In reality, I was making things way more complicated than they needed to be.

Fortunately, I’ve got time to work on that.