Independent practices have been competing with online pet pharmacies for years. What is different now is the number of well-funded players trying to own the same workflow: the prescription request, the refill reminder, the autoship prompt, and the client’s next click.
In a November 3 article, Today’s Veterinary Business reported that PETMETRIX has released its Pet Medicine Home Delivery Report, 2026 Edition, and the takeaway for practice owners is not simply “Chewy is big” or “Amazon is here.” It is that pet prescription competition is becoming a systems fight. The report covers the U.S. companion-animal home delivery market across 90 pages and 26 chapters, including purchasing patterns, pharmacy roles, ownership changes, and guidance for independent practices.
Today’s Veterinary Business summarized the report as tracking a dense 22-month stretch of change: Tractor Supply’s acquisitions of Allivet and VIP Petcare, Amazon’s pet Rx launch with Vetsource, Chewy’s acquisition of Modern Animal, Walmart’s addition of pet services, Midwest Veterinary Supply’s acquisition of Victor Medical Company, and the proposed MWI Animal Health-Covetrus merger. PETMETRIX founder Richard Hayworth called it the most significant stretch of new pet Rx competition he has seen since Chewy launched Autoship.
For independents, that means pharmacy is no longer just a line item. It is part of the client experience.
The new competitors are building around convenience
The clearest pattern is vertical connection: retail, pharmacy, clinic services, membership programs, app reminders, and home delivery are being tied together.
Chewy completed its Modern Animal acquisition on May 21, 2026, according to a Chewy SEC filing, for a reported $400 million purchase price. Modern Animal now tells members that, beginning November 18, 2026, clients in several markets will be able to order prescription medications directly through the Modern Animal app, with fulfillment powered by Chewy Pharmacy.
Tractor Supply is building a different version of the same idea. Its May 2026 VIP Petcare acquisition brought in a mobile veterinary services platform operating community clinics in about 2,700 retail locations, including 1,700 Tractor Supply locations. The company explicitly framed the deal as an end-to-end pet care offering spanning veterinary services, pharmacy, pet services, and retail, using Allivet’s digital pharmacy capabilities.
Amazon’s partnership with Vetsource gives pet owners the familiar Amazon checkout process for pet prescriptions, while Vetsource handles dispensing, delivery, and veterinarian approval. Vetsource also announced in September that it had opened a fourth pharmacy location in Atlanta, joining sites in Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas, with the new site expected to scale to 12,000 orders per day by the end of its first year.
None of that means independent practices cannot compete. It does mean “we have an online pharmacy somewhere on the website” is probably not enough.
The margin risk is real, but the trust risk is bigger
Today’s Veterinary Business reported that the veterinary channel still controls 70% of the estimated $12.97 billion U.S. pet medication market. That is meaningful. But the same summary cited product-only clinic visits falling 6.2% in 2025, twice the 3.1% decline in total in-hospital visits.
A client who buys preventives elsewhere may still love your doctors. But if refills, reminders, coupons, and subscription management all happen outside your practice, the relationship can slowly shift. The retailer becomes the convenient voice between visits, while the clinic becomes the authorization step.
That is a weak position for an independent practice. It also creates staff frustration when clients call the hospital about a delayed third-party order the team did not control.
What independents should do now
This is not a call to block outside pharmacy requests or make clients feel guilty for shopping. That approach can damage trust quickly. A better independent strategy is to make your own process easier, clearer, and more clinically connected.
Start with four owner-level questions:
- How fast do we approve legitimate outside pharmacy requests? If approvals are inconsistent, assign ownership and measure turnaround time.
- Is our in-house or online pharmacy easy to explain in one sentence? If your team cannot explain the benefit quickly, clients will default to the app they already know.
- Do we talk about manufacturer guarantees, product sourcing, refill timing, and monitoring before the client leaves? This is a medical conversation, not just a sales pitch.
- Do our refill reminders sound like care, or like retail? Independents can win here by tying reminders to the patient’s plan: testing due, weight range, adverse effects, seasonality, and when to recheck.
The independent advantage is still trust. You know the patient, the local parasite risk, the client’s budget, and whether a refill should trigger a recheck. But trust needs a workflow. In 2027, the practices that keep pharmacy revenue will likely be the ones that make the clinically right choice also feel like the easy choice.