About DogDecide
DogDecide exists for one narrow reason: the money decisions around getting and keeping a dog are usually made with bad information. The numbers that circulate are either marketing copy from companies that profit from your decision, or single headline figures with no range and no explanation.
We build calculators that show the arithmetic instead. A range, a breakdown, an assumptions panel you can actually open, and a plain statement of what the tool does not know.
Independence
DogDecide is not owned by, funded by, or partnered with a pet food manufacturer, a retailer, a veterinary group or an insurance company. No company reviews our content before publication, and no company can pay to change a range, a ranking or a recommendation.
How we make money
Two ways, both disclosed:
- Affiliate commissions. If you sign up for a product through a link on this site, we may be paid a commission. Affiliate links are labelled where they appear. The commission is the same regardless of which product you choose, and several of the pages we publish carry no affiliate links at all.
- Display advertising. Some pages may carry advertising. Advertisers never see our content before it is published and cannot influence it.
What we do not do: sell email lists, publish sponsored "studies", or accept payment for a favourable rating.
How the numbers are built
Every published range starts from public data — government price indices, published pet-ownership cost surveys, insurer premium averages and emergency veterinary cost data. We then apply adjustment factors that are stated openly in the tool itself:
- body size, which drives both food volume and veterinary dosage
- life stage, with a stated multiplier for senior dogs
- local cost of living, applied to services rather than retail goods
- the choices a reader makes about grooming and insurance
Ranges are rounded and deliberately wide. A narrow range would imply a precision we do not have.
What we are not
DogDecide is not a veterinary practice. We do not diagnose, treat or give medical advice, and nothing on this site should be read as a substitute for a licensed veterinarian who has examined your dog. We are also not financial advisers: our tools help you build a budget, not an investment plan.
Corrections
If a figure on this site is wrong, we want to know. Corrections are made on the page itself, with the date of the change recorded. Write to us via the contact page.
Current status
DogDecide launched in October 2026 with a single tool, the dog cost calculator. Two further tools — a pet insurance value comparison and an emergency fund planner — are in development. The site is built as a static site, which is a deliberate choice: pages load fast, there is nothing tracking you between visits, and there is no database of your data to lose.