How we test.
A short, honest description of how we choose products, how long we test them, who we test them with, and how money flows through this site.
Choosing what to test.
We start with a problem, not a product. (“Charlie pants on tiles all summer.” “Luna won’t drink from the bowl.”) Then we make a longlist of every product within the budget we’d realistically spend. We buy as many as we can — usually eight to twelve — with our own money. We do not accept free samples. We do not take briefs from brands.
Testing.
Each product is used at home for at least fourteen days. Wherever a measurement makes sense (surface temperature, water flow, decibel level, time to consume), we record it daily with the same cheap instruments — an infrared thermometer, a kitchen scale, a phone decibel meter, a stopwatch. Each product is also used by at least one animal other than ours, where the size class allows.
The rubric.
We score every product on five things, out of two each, for a total out of ten:
- Works. Does it do the thing it claims to do, measurably?
- Holds up. Is it still doing it on day fourteen?
- Pet’s vote. Did the animal come back to it unprompted?
- Human friction. Cleaning, charging, assembly, smell.
- Price. Relative to the rest of the field.
Affiliate disclosure.
Most product links on this site are affiliate links. When you click one and buy the product within a window set by the retailer (usually 24–30 days for Amazon, 7–30 days for others), we receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Commissions typically range from 1% to 8% of the sale.
This commission does not influence our recommendations. We choose what to recommend before we set up any affiliate links. We do not change rankings in response to commission differences between products. If a product we recommended turns out to be poor on long-term use, we update the post and remove it from the top of the list, even if it earns us more than the replacement.
We earn from the following programmes: Amazon Associates, Pets at Home Affiliate, Chewy Influencer.
Sponsored content.
We have never accepted sponsored content. If we ever do, it will be clearly labelled at the top of the post in the same band as the affiliate disclosure, and it will not appear in any “Best of” roundup.
Correcting mistakes.
If we get something wrong — wrong measurement, wrong product, wrong recommendation — we update the post with a dated note at the top and a brief explanation at the bottom. We do not silently edit posts after publication.