Stone Drug’s Secret Prescription After 50 Years In Jackson Are Two Lovable Dogs

Stone Drug is a Jackson Hole icon, praised for its friendly, neighborhood feel. That isn’t hurt by its unofficial customer-relations department, headed up by two fun-loving pooches, Zuri and Lucy. 

The pets belong to Stone Drug’s pharmacists, Tori Pretsch and Laura Lee Nelson, the shop’s owner. 

Neither dog does any special tricks while on the job, other than just being 90 pounds of cold-nosed curiosity. Often that turns out to be just what the doctor ordered.

“They’re good therapy for people,” Nelson told Cowboy State Daily. “People might be feeling bad, but one of the dogs comes up and wants to be petted and they’re like, ‘Aww … thanks.’”

Some people even stop by the store just to see Zuri or Lucy. And they’re disappointed if the dogs don’t happen to be there, Nelson said.

“They’re like, ‘Oh, you didn’t bring your dog?’ And I’m like, ‘Sorry! It was a nice day, so I left her home!’” she said.

How The Dogs Were 'Hired'

Bringing her dog to work started by accident for Nelson. She was working for the pharmacy’s previous owner, John Crook, when one of her two Airedales was hit by a car while chasing a fox. 

“Harley, my little one, was I don’t know, 6 months old at the time, and I was like, I can’t leave him at home by himself, because I had outdoor kennels,” Nelson recalled. “So I said, ‘Sorry John, I have to bring him to work.’”

After she bought the pharmacy from Crook in 2010, she just kept bringing her Airedales with her to work. They’re hypoallergenic and don’t shed, which Nelson believes is an important consideration if you’re going to have a dog in a health-focused business every day. 

Zuri, Pretsch’s Bernedoodle, is similarly hypoallergenic and doesn’t shed. She’s been coming to the store since puppyhood, with Nelson’s blessing.

“Most people will come in just to say, ‘hi’ to her,” Pretsch said. “If you know Stone Drug, then you know Zuri, too.”

Because Zuri is still a puppy, she spends a good bit of her workday napping — between chasing customers for a game of “scratch behind my ears.” She loves chasing snowflakes in the winter, too, as photos in the pharmacy will attest.

Local Economic Pressures

Stone Drug was started by pharmacist Jack Leroy Stone in 1975, when he bought out a predecessor, Lumley Drug. He reopened as Stone Drug in 1976, making the store’s name 50 years old this year.

Jackson Hole didn't have many places to buy things at the time, so Stone stocked a lot of items, including refrigerators and appliances. 

Today, Stone Drug’s friendly neighborhood feeling persists against a backdrop of serious economic pressures, both local and national. 

On the local level, housing is a critical challenge for Nelson, who is struggling to hire workers.

“I’m attempting to hire new grads,” she said. “Well, they’re in debt, unless they’ve got a rich family member, and they’d have to spend $4,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment.”

Some of the chains Nelson is competing against are able to offer their workers housing, which she can't do. 

“It’s hard,” she said. “You have to really want to work for us.”

Nelson has existing employees, meanwhile, who are selling their homes because property taxes have become so high, she added. 

“It’s chasing people out,” she said. “I don’t know how the old people who live in the old subdivisions make it. (That’s) where a lot of the old houses have been knocked down and new ones put up, and the taxes just go out the roof.”

Nelson recently moved from Wilson to Alpine, noting she makes a “good living” in Jackson Hole but is still “poor.”

Now she’s renting, instead of owning her own 3 acres. Because her landlord insisted, she also had to give up her cats. 

Squeezed On Health Care Side, Too

On the national side, Nelson faces an industry where insurers and federal pricing rules are dramatically restricting what pharmacies can earn.

“Even on generics, which might cost $5, they’ll pay us a penny a pill,” she said. “We have to constantly shop for drugs so we don’t lose money.”

She’s filled $500 prescriptions where the pharmacy only made $1. 

“It’s not like you make 10% on (prescriptions) anymore,” she said. 

That might be fine, she added, if every pharmacy were paid the same. But there are preferred pharmacies, and they get a bump in reimbursements. 

“The insurance company picks that,” she said. “And I don’t know how they pick it.”

Because of how reimbursements work, Nelson has been forced to stop taking GoodRx cards.

“We lose money on every one of them,” she said. “I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t lose money. That doesn’t help me keep the doors open.’”

Diversifying To Survive

Pressures like that are one reason so many independent pharmacies like Nelson’s have already disappeared from the retail landscape. The USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy and Government Service found in a 2024 study that one in three retail pharmacies have closed since 2010. That’s more than twice the rate of chain pharmacies.

To make ends meet, Nelson has leaned into the diversification of the front end of her store, bringing in a range of products from greeting cards and cosmetics to camping and fishing gear. Any time a customer tells her they’re looking for something, she brings it into the store. That’s earned the store a reputation as the place to check first when looking for something unusual. 

On a recent Saturday, that something was a particular size of CO2 cartridges for one customer. Along the way, he found a Revell model car kit just like the first one he had as a young boy. 

So he left with both the cartridges and the kit, deciding on the spot to remake his first boyhood model car, with the same color and all. 

He’ll be yet one more customer spreading the word that Stone Drug is the place with whatever you need — and sometimes, even what you didn’t know you needed. 

“It used to be the pharmacy held the store,” Nelson said. “You made your money with the pharmacy and the front end was just fluff. But now the front end pretty much equals the pharmacy, so we have to make sure we’re really up-to-date on the upfront stuff.”

That’s led Nelson to lean more into its sporting-goods section — lures and fishing rods are top sellers every summer. 

“We do have a lot of old customers who have been with us forever,” Nelson said. “But we have a lot of new people who come by, didn’t even know we had a pharmacy and there’s no line. They can talk to us. So it’s easier.”'

Good Health Is What It’s All About

Some of her new customers are surprised when they see all the camping, fishing, and hunting equipment, which dominates several aisles of the store.

“Why would a drugstore have all that?” they’ll ask, perplexed. 

But they’ll still wander those aisles and find something they need, which is, ultimately, the answer to their question.

Nelson prefers diversification to the approach some pharmacies take, where a “consulting” fee is tacked on if customers have questions about their medications. 

“It’s been suggested we do that,” she said. “And I’m like no, nobody would ask me a question after that.”

It also wouldn’t be good for people’s health, she believes, and that’s the whole point behind her store. 

She believes her focus on health and customer service is why Stone Drug has survived five decades in Jackson Hole, despite economic whiplash and tightening health care margins. She’s made it a place where people go when they really need something — or in the case of Zuri and Lucy, someone — that just can’t be found anywhere else.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.