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 shortlist the field honestly — real, in-stock products judged on mechanism, size fit, material safety, and upkeep. We buy the ones we want to live with using our own money. We do not accept free samples. We do not take briefs from brands.
Testing — depth over breadth.
We are two people with one dog and one cat. We’d rather test a few things hard, over months, than rush a dozen over a weekend — so Charlie (65 lb anxious Golden) and Luna (8 lb rescue cat) are our only test subjects, and we say so. When we test a product it’s used at home for at least fourteen days, and wherever a measurement makes sense (surface temperature, water flow, decibel level, time to consume) we record it with the same cheap instruments — an infrared thermometer, a kitchen scale, a phone decibel meter, a stopwatch.
“Tested in our flat” vs “spec-based” picks.
A roundup can only include so many things we’ve personally lived with, so every pick is labelled. A Tested in our flat pick has been used here by Charlie or Luna, with real observations and a score on the rubric below. A spec-based pick is one we shortlisted on its merits — real product, honest specs, sound reasons — but haven’t yet put under our own animals. We never dress a spec-based pick up as a tested one, and we never invent a measurement. As we test more, spec-based picks become tested ones.
Who checks it.
One of us is a veterinary nurse; the other ran a print magazine. Anything we say about health — hydration, anxiety, overheating — is checked by the vet nurse before it goes up, and we keep medical claims modest and free of made-up statistics on purpose.
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 within the window Amazon sets after your click, 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 through the Amazon Associates programme. Links are localised to each visitor's Amazon store (UK, US and others) via Amazon OneLink, so you buy on your nearest store.
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.