Your 90-day guide

every other guide we write starts by scoring a symptom. this one can't, because if you're doing this right there isn't one. so we start somewhere more useful: what's actually going into your dog, every day, for years.

run through these honestly. there are no wrong answers — the point is to see where the gaps actually are for your dog, because they're different for every household.

now score the quiet stuff. these are the markers that drift so slowly you'd never notice them move — which is exactly why they're worth writing down today.

screenshot the scores, or write them on the jar lid. you'll compare them at week 12.

this one has a 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 two a day, split them — one after breakfast, one after dinner. it spreads the load rather than delivering everything at once.

every bag of dog food says complete and balanced. that phrase does a lot of heavy lifting, and it's worth knowing what it actually means — because it isn't what most people assume.

and that's the number on paper, before real life gets involved. three things happen between the factory and your dog's bowl, and every one of them moves in the same direction:

• Heat. kibble is cooked at high temperature. several vitamins don't survive that well, which is why manufacturers add extra in at the start and hope enough is left at the end.
• Time and air. from the day a bag is opened, the fats start oxidizing and the fat-soluble vitamins start dropping. a bag that takes six weeks to finish is not the same food on the last day as it was on the first.
• Everything else they eat. treats, toppers, chews, the corner of your toast. every one of those is a calorie that isn't from the balanced portion, and a dog getting a quarter of their intake from unbalanced extras is getting a quarter less of the balance.

none of this makes commercial food bad — it's a genuinely impressive thing to get right at scale, and most dogs do fine on it. but "fine" and "everything they could be getting" aren't the same target, and the distance between them is what this chew exists to close.

be ready for this to be anti-climactic. there's no symptom disappearing, no before-and-after photo. what you get instead is a slow drift in the right direction on things you weren't really tracking — which is why chapter 1 exists.

21 nutrients in one 3.5 g chew, at levels you can read off the jar rather than hiding behind a "proprietary blend". here's what the main ones are there for.

• Heart and brain — folic acid, potassium, vitamin B12. the three that work together on nerve function and healthy blood cells. B12 in particular is one seniors absorb less of as they age, which is exactly when they need it.
• Bones and teeth — calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, vitamin D3. calcium and phosphorus have to arrive in the right ratio to each other or neither works properly, which is the single most common thing home-cooked diets get wrong.
• Immune support — vitamins A, C and E, plus zinc. the antioxidant group. vitamin E is also the one that degrades fastest in an open bag, which is why a top-up matters more the longer that bag has been sitting there.
• Thyroid and metabolism — iodine. small amount, narrow window. too little and too much both cause problems, which is exactly why you want it at a measured level rather than guessed at.
• Energy — the full B-complex. B1, B2, B6, B12, niacin, pantothenic acid. these are how food actually becomes usable energy; they're water-soluble, so there's no store to draw on and they need topping up daily.
• Skin, coat and joints — zinc, biotin, methionine, manganese. the structural crew for keratin, connective tissue and cartilage.

per 3.5 g chew, vegetable flavor, 60 to a jar, made in the USA. third-party verified to USP, AOAC and FCC standards — the same testing standards used for human supplements, which is rarer in dog supplements than it should be. contains brewers yeast; check the full list on the jar if your dog has a known yeast sensitivity.

here's the honest reason this chew is a harder sell than the other three, and why we think it's the most important one we make.

the other three sell themselves because something is already wrong. your dog is scratching, or struggling on the stairs, or having accidents in the house — and you go looking for a fix. that's reactive, and there's nothing wrong with it. it's what most of us do, with our dogs and with ourselves.

that's the whole argument for this chew. you're not fixing anything. you're making sure the basics are covered every single day, for years, so that fewer things go quietly wrong in the first place — and so that when something does, your dog is meeting it from a stronger position.

it's the least exciting thing in our range and it's the one i'd never take a dog off. every dog on that bus gets one, including the ones with nothing whatsoever wrong with them. especially the ones with nothing wrong with them.

to be clear about what we're claiming: a multivitamin fills nutritional gaps. it doesn't prevent disease, and nothing on this page should be read as saying it does. what it does is make sure a shortfall isn't one of the things stacked against your dog.

most dogs treat this one as a treat — a fair few of our reviews are people telling us their dog eats the vitamin out of the bowl first. if yours is the exception:

• Crumble it into wet food. break it small so it can't be picked around. the one that works most often.
• Warm the food slightly. ten seconds in the microwave lifts the smell of dinner over the smell of the chew.
• Press it into something sticky. peanut butter (xylitol-free), plain pumpkin, or 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 one that turns up in a bowl.
• Half now, half tomorrow. for small dogs on a half chew, the other half keeps fine in the jar.

the chew closes the gap. these quietly reopen it, and all four are free to fix.

• How you store the food. don't tip kibble into a plastic bin and bin the bag — the bag is designed to keep light and air out and the bin isn't. keep it in its bag, roll it down, clip it, and put the whole thing in the container. buy a size they'll finish in about a month.
• Free-feeding. a bowl topped up through the day means stale food, no idea how much they're actually eating, and no way to spot the day they go off it — which is often the first sign of anything.
• Treats creeping past a tenth of their intake. the usual rule of thumb is that treats stay under about 10% of daily calories. above that you're meaningfully diluting the balanced part of the diet, and it creeps up on everyone.
• Home-cooking without a formula. cooking for your dog is a lovely thing to do and it's also the easiest way to end up short on calcium, zinc or vitamin E. if you're doing it as more than an occasional topper, get the recipe checked by a veterinary nutritionist — it's a one-time cost that makes the whole effort worth something.

this chew is nutritional insurance for a healthy dog. it is not a diagnosis and it is not treatment, and the worst thing it could do is give you a reason to wait.

• A symptom that's actually there. persistent scratching, a limp, ongoing stomach trouble, a cough. those need identifying, and there's a specific chew for the first three or a vet for the rest. don't give it three months on a general vitamin first.
• Sudden weight loss or gain, or a real change in energy. that's a bloodwork conversation. thyroid and other internal issues show up this way and no supplement touches them.
• A diagnosed condition. kidney, liver and heart conditions often come with specific dietary restrictions — some of them about minerals that are in here. if your dog has a diagnosis, check with your vet before adding this.
• Puppies on a large-breed growth diet. those foods are deliberately calibrated on calcium for a reason. worth a quick word with your vet about what to add and when.

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.

the comparison that matters on this one isn't another vitamin. it's what a single dental clean, a course of medication, or one investigative vet visit costs — any of which is more than a year of this. you're not choosing between this chew and a cheaper chew. you're choosing between spending a little every day and finding out later.

put three reminders in your phone now: 4 weeks, 8 weeks and 12 weeks from today. when each one goes off, come back here and re-score the same five things. on this chew, week 12 is the only one that will really tell you anything — the earlier two are there so you've got the shape of the line, not just the ends of it.

one point on two lines over 12 weeks is a real result on a chew like this. it will not feel dramatic. that's the entire point — and it's exactly why you wrote the numbers down in week one.

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 7, 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.

we'll be straight with you about this one: a guarantee is a slightly odd fit for a product whose job is that nothing goes wrong. it's there because you shouldn't have to take our word for the quality — but if you're judging this chew on a dramatic change in 90 days, you're judging it on the wrong thing. judge it on the coat, the shedding and the scores. and then keep going, because the real return on this one is measured in years.