Product guides on Petoniki recommend specific products for pets. This page sets out how those recommendations are made, what we check before we make one, and what a recommendation is not.
The wider commitments behind our content — what we publish, what we refuse, and what we do not claim — are described on the About Us page.
How we decide what to cover
Our guides cover products made for pets: food and feeding equipment, housing, grooming and care, health products, toys, training aids, travel gear and technology for animals. If a product is not made for a pet, it does not belong in a guide here.
Within that, a guide starts from the question a reader is trying to answer — which harness suits a dog that pulls, whether a pet water fountain is worth the weekly cleaning, how to judge a cat carrier — and not from a list of products a brand wants promoted. We cover a category when the differences between the products in it actually matter to the animal or to the person looking after it.
Where a product is advertised on the site, that is not a reason to cover it, and it is not a reason to avoid it either.
How we obtain the products we recommend
Where a claim about a product can reasonably be checked — food, feeding, care and health-related products in particular — we obtain the product and use it ourselves before recommending it.
We do not claim that every product mentioned on Petoniki has been tested. Many of our articles describe a category, a material or a design feature without recommending a specific product at all, and there is nothing to obtain for those.
Where we cannot check a claim in that way, we do not present it as established.
What we look at before we recommend
We look at what the product itself declares and at how it behaves in ordinary use: what it contains and what it is made of; whether it does what its own instructions say it does; materials, construction and finish; sizing and fit against the animal it is sold for; how it is cleaned, stored and maintained; and how it holds up over the time we use it.
We also weigh practical cost. A cheaper product that has to be replaced twice a year is not the cheaper option, and we say so when that is what we found.
What we describe is what we observed with the product in front of us. It is not a measurement of every unit a manufacturer makes, and ingredients, materials and instructions can change without notice.
What a recommendation is not
A recommendation is a judgement about a product, not advice about your animal. It is not a diagnosis, not a prescription and not a treatment plan, and it is not a substitute for a veterinarian who has examined the animal in front of you.
We do not carry out laboratory testing and we do not claim to. We commission no clinical trials of our own, and we do not present a product as clinically proven on the strength of our recommendation.
We do not claim that a licensed veterinarian reviews, approves or fact-checks our product coverage, and we name no veterinary reviewer.
Health-related products
Food, supplements, parasite-control products, and grooming products sold for skin conditions sit close to health advice. Our coverage of them stays general: what the product is for, what its own label declares, what its instructions say, and what a buyer should check before using it.
We do not tell you what to give your animal, in what amount, or instead of a treatment a veterinarian has prescribed, and a product page is not a substitute for an examination. How to read our health content, and when to stop reading and call a professional, is set out in the Medical Disclaimer.
Advertising, affiliate links and independence
Advertising does not decide what we cover, what we recommend or how we judge anything. Advertisers, sponsors and affiliate partners get no approval rights over editorial content: they do not see a guide before publication, they cannot ask for a change, and no payment buys a favourable recommendation.
We do not publish sponsored articles presented as editorial content, and a product being advertised on the site tells you nothing about whether we recommend it.
Some links in our product guides are affiliate links. If you buy through one, we may earn a commission, and this never changes the price you pay. A commission is not a factor in which products a guide covers, which ones it names, or how we judge them.
The rules for advertising and for affiliate links are set out in the Advertising Disclosure and the Affiliate Disclosure.
Availability, prices and regional differences
What is sold, how it is labelled and what may legally be sold differ between countries, and sometimes between regions within one country. A product described here may be unavailable where you live, sold under a different name, or made to a different specification.
Prices and availability are not ours to set. Anything we record about a price is a snapshot from when we looked, not a current quote.
Where a product is replaced, reformulated or withdrawn, we update the page when we find out.
Corrections and reader feedback
If something we wrote about a product is wrong — a factual mistake, a specification that has changed, a missing safety warning, or wording that sounds more certain than what we actually checked — tell us at [email protected], with the page and, if you can, what you believe is correct.
We correct or annotate the page once the point is confirmed, and the change is recorded through our normal revision history. The process is described on the Editorial Policy page.