If your Facebook feed looks anything like mine, it’s probably filled with ads for products promising to make your dog feel better.
A miracle supplement for joints. Another one for gut health. Something for allergies, anxiety, inflammation… you name it.
And the reality is, these ads are created by really good marketing professionals. They know how to tug at our heartstrings and make us feel like if we don’t buy this product, our dog might be missing out on the one thing that could finally help them feel better.
Seeing all of that can get overwhelming really fast. And let’s face it… if we bought every product that promised to help our dogs, we could spend thousands of dollars.
I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of watching a 30-minute video promising the world for my dogs more than once. Because of course I want the best for them.
Before I click the buy button, I stop and ask a few questions
What am I actually trying to help?
Does my dog really need this?
What does the ingredient list look like?
Could another product with similar, or even better, ingredients make more sense for my dog?
And one of the biggest questions…
Does this actually make sense for MY dog?
Just because hundreds of people in the comments say something worked amazingly for their dog doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for mine.
Every dog is different. That’s something I’ve learned over and over with Ginger, Thunder, and Wizard, and it’s why I wrote about Why Every Dog Needs a Different Plan here: Why Every Dog Needs a Different Plan
Ginger reminded me of this again
A few days after I started using Ginger’s new Help ’Em Up harness, I was putting the rear portion on her and she growled at me.
Of course, I listened to her.
I took that growl as information that something about what was happening made her uncomfortable.
Even though this harness has thousands of glowing reviews from people saying how much it helped their dogs, I still have to pay attention to what my dog is telling me.
I’m not giving up on the harness yet. We may need to adjust it differently, or maybe there’s another solution that will work better for her.
But what works beautifully for 100 other dogs may not be right for Ginger.
Reviews can help, but your dog gets a vote too
That same idea applies to supplements, food, training methods, equipment… really almost everything we do with our dogs.
Reviews can help us narrow down our choices. Recommendations from people we trust can give us somewhere to start. And sometimes a product really does turn out to be exactly what our dog needed.
But I don’t want a glowing review or clever ad to replace paying attention to the dog standing in front of me.
I’m still learning every single day. And the more I learn, the more I find myself asking questions instead of immediately looking for the next thing to buy.
What problem am I actually trying to solve?
What do I know about this product?
And most importantly…
What is my dog telling me?
Sometimes the best decision isn’t finding the product with the most five-star reviews.
It’s finding the solution that makes the most sense for the individual dog in front of you.
