Your 90-day guide

joints don't improve on a day you can point to. they improve a little at a time, and because you're with your dog every single day, that's exactly the kind of change you're least likely to see. the people who spot it are the ones who wrote something down at the start.

so before anything else — score them today. two minutes now is what lets you answer "is this actually working?" in three months with something better than a feeling.

screenshot the scores or write them on the jar lid. you want to find them again in a month without hunting.

when someone tells us it isn't working, dosing is the first thing we check — and it's often the whole answer. hip & joint has one catch that trips people up more than any other: small dogs take a half chew, not a whole one.

60 chews per jar. if your dog is on more than one a day, split it — one morning, one evening. it keeps the level steady rather than spiking and dropping.

go and check the jar against that table before you read on. if you've had it wrong, fix it today and count today as day one.

we went back through every hip & joint review where a customer told us how long it took, and this is the real spread. worth saying up front — a meaningful number of dogs don't turn the corner until month three, and that's normal for what's being rebuilt in there.

the chew rebuilds the joint. muscle is what holds that joint steady while it does — and a dog who has been sore for a year has quietly stopped using the muscles that hurt. this is how you get them back, and it takes five minutes.

do it after they've warmed up — after breakfast, after a short walk. never when they're cold and stiff. slow and controlled beats fast and many.

• Sit-to-stand · 2 minutes. ask for a sit. hold a treat at nose height and move it slowly forward and up so they stand to follow it. reward. five to eight times, unhurried. this is the single best thing you can do for weak back legs.
• Weight shifts · 1½ minutes. have them stand square. move a treat slowly to the left so they shift their weight to follow, reward, then the right. five each side. it wakes up the stabiliser muscles around the hip.
• Cookie stretch · 1½ minutes. standing, guide a treat from their nose round toward their hip so they curve into a C. hold three to five seconds, reward, swap sides. three or four each way. spine and hip flexibility.

i'm going to say this gently, because it isn't a judgement and nearly every dog i see could stand to lose a pound or two, mine included.

there is no supplement on earth — ours included — that out-works that. if your dog is carrying extra weight, losing it will do more for their mobility in 90 days than anything else in this guide. the two together are what actually changes the picture.

• The rib test. run your hands along their sides. you should feel the ribs easily under a thin layer, without pressing. if you have to push to find them, there's weight to lose.
• Measure the food. not a scoop, a measuring cup. "a scoop" drifts upward over years without anyone noticing.
• Count the treats. including the training rewards from chapter 4. treats should be under a tenth of what they eat in a day.
• Ask your vet for a target. they'll give you a number and a timeline, and slow is right — crash diets on an older dog cost muscle, which is the last thing sore joints need.

swimming and short flat walks build muscle without loading the joint. stairs, jumping and hard pivoting do the opposite while things are still rebuilding.

every step your dog takes bracing against a slippery floor or hauling themselves onto a sofa is load going through a joint that's trying to heal. take that load away and the chews get to do their job instead of playing catch-up. most of this is a one-afternoon fix.

• Rugs on the slippery parts. hardwood and tile make a sore dog brace with every step. runners along the routes they use frequently — to the door, to the food bowl, to their bed — do more good than almost anything else on this list.
• A proper bed, off the cold floor. memory foam or orthopedic, somewhere warm. cold, hard surfaces make stiff mornings worse.
• A ramp for the car. jumping down out of a boot is one of the hardest things you can ask of an aging joint. if you lift them instead, support the chest and the back end — never pull on the legs.
• Block the steep stairs for now. a baby gate and a carry for a few weeks isn't babying them, it's not undoing your own progress.
• Raise the bowls. especially for bigger dogs — it takes the strain off the neck, shoulders and front legs at every meal.
• Keep the nails short. this is the one almost nobody thinks about. once nails are long enough to touch the floor while your dog is just standing, they push the toes back and tilt the whole leg out of its natural position — so every step gets taken from a posture that loads the joint wrong. little and often beats one big trim, and if you can hear them clicking on the floor, they're too long.
• Trim the fur between the pads. the tufts that grow through turn a grippy foot into a skate, especially on hardwood. two minutes with blunt scissors and they've got their feet back.

healthy cartilage works like a wet sponge sitting between two bones. it's soaked in joint fluid, and every step compresses it and lets it spring back — that's what stops bone touching bone.

with years of use, that fluid drains faster than the body replaces it. the sponge dries out. a dry sponge doesn't cushion, it cracks — and now every step causes a bit of damage, which causes inflammation, which thins the cartilage further. that's the loop your dog is stuck in, and it's why the stiffness gets worse rather than staying still.

pain medication turns the volume down on that loop, which matters and helps them feel better today. it doesn't refill the sponge. that part has to be rebuilt, and rebuilding tissue is measured in months.

• Glucosamine HCl · 500 mg — the raw material for joint fluid. we use the HCl form, which is more concentrated per milligram than the cheaper sulfate version.
• MSM · 400 mg — helps calm the inflammation that's driving the damage cycle, and supports collagen.
• Green-Lipped Mussel · 150 mg — works on inflammation and joint fluid together. it's expensive, which is why most chews leave it out.
• Chondroitin Sulfate · 110 mg — helps cartilage hold water and absorb load.
• Vitamin C · 20 mg and Manganese · 2.5 mg — collagen can't be built without them.

per 4 g chew. duck flavor, 60 to a jar, made in the USA, third-party verified to USP, AOAC and FCC standards. contains shellfish — the glucosamine comes from shrimp and crab, and green-lipped mussel is a shellfish. worth knowing if anyone in your house has a shellfish allergy, or if your dog has ever reacted to seafood.

we hear this one a lot. someone starts the chews, stops the pain relief the same week, and ten days later their dog is worse than before the box arrived — and it looks like the chews failed. it isn't. it's the medication wearing off with nothing rebuilt yet to take its place.

pain medication manages how the joint feels now. the chews work on what the joint is made of. the second one takes weeks, so for those weeks your dog needs both.

the label carries a caution worth repeating: if your dog's condition worsens or doesn't improve, stop and speak to your vet. safe use in pregnant dogs or dogs intended for breeding hasn't been established.

most dogs take these like a treat — it's a duck-flavoured soft chew, not a pill. for the ones who don't, work down this list until something sticks.

• Crumble it into wet food. break it small enough that it can't be eaten around. the one that works most often.
• Warm the food slightly. ten seconds in the microwave lifts the smell of dinner above the smell of the chew.
• Press it into something sticky. peanut butter (xylitol-free), plain pumpkin, cream cheese.
• Make them earn it. ask for a sit first, then hand it over. a chew that's a reward gets eaten far more often than a chew that turns up in a bowl.
• Half now, half later. for small dogs on a half chew, the other half keeps fine in the jar until tomorrow.

this chew is built for wear-and-tear joint decline — the gradual kind that creeps in over years. several other things look exactly like that from the outside, and a supplement won't touch any of them:

• A torn cruciate ligament. usually sudden — fine yesterday, holding a back leg up today, often after a twist or a slip. that's a surgical conversation, not a supplement one, and waiting makes it worse.
• Spinal or disc trouble. if the back legs are wobbly, crossing over, knuckling, or scuffing the tops of the paws, that's usually nerves rather than joints. see a vet promptly.
• An infection or an immune problem. sudden lameness with heat, swelling, fever or an off-color dog is not arthritis.
• Something that came on fast in an older dog. a limp that appears in days and gets worse steadily deserves an x-ray. not to frighten you — just don't let a supplement become a reason to wait.

a jar looks like a jar. what matters is what a full 90-day run costs for a dog your dog's size — because that's the commitment, and you should be able to see the whole number before you start.

subscriber pricing, free shipping. those jar counts cover the full 90 days with some to spare — a small dog on a half chew gets four months out of a single jar, which makes this the cheapest 90 days in the whole range.

for context: a single vet consult for a limp, before any x-rays or medication, generally costs more than a full 90-day run. and the prescriptions that follow are usually monthly, forever.

subscribing is cheaper, but the reason we push it is the failure mode we see most — running out for two weeks at month two, right as things are finally turning, and giving back ground you've already paid for.

put three reminders in your phone now: 4 weeks, 8 weeks and 12 weeks from today. when each one goes off, come back here, re-score the same six things, and film the same ten seconds from the same spot. week 12 is the one that closes the loop — it's the mark the whole guarantee is built around.

one point on two lines by week 8 is a real result. it won't feel dramatic while you're living it — that's exactly why you wrote the numbers down.

The 90-day guarantee, plainly

• Give it 90 consecutive days at the correct dose for your dog's weight. that's the deal on your side, and it's why chapter 2 is where it is.
• If there's no improvement at the end of it, email us and we'll refund you. you won't have to argue for it.
• It doesn't cover taste. if your dog won't eat them, that's a problem we want to solve with you — chapter 9, or just email.
• Anything damaged, missing or wrong is fixed straight away, whatever day of the 90 you're on. no conditions on that one.

it runs 90 days and not 30 because of the timeline in chapter 3. a third of dogs haven't turned the corner by day 30 — a 30-day guarantee would be a nicer-sounding promise that quietly set those owners up to fail.