The Dog Shortlist

Affiliate Disclosure

Last updated: July 11, 2026

We believe you should always know how a website that recommends products makes its money. This page explains exactly that.

The Short Version

The Dog Shortlist earns commissions through affiliate links. When you click one of our product links and buy something, the retailer or brand pays us a small percentage of the sale. You never pay more because of this. The price is exactly the same as when you visit the retailer directly.

We partner with affiliate networks and with brands that sell through major retailers such as Amazon. When you click a product link on this site, the network registers that the visit came from us. If you then make a purchase, a commission can be attributed to us. That commission is paid by the brand or retailer, never by you.

Why You Can Still Trust Our Guides

Commissions could create a conflict of interest, so we work with three firm rules:

  1. Research comes first. Our recommendations are based on desk research: manufacturer specifications, expert reviews and verified user feedback from multiple independent sources. We compare products on the criteria that matter for the category, and we say so when a product falls short.
  2. Placement cannot be bought. Brands cannot pay for a spot in our guides or for a higher position. One thing we do weigh, and say so openly: when products are of comparable quality, the commission a sale earns us can influence their order. A product we judge worse never outranks a better one because of commission.
  3. We disclose everywhere. Every page with affiliate links carries a disclosure, and this page is linked from every page on the site.

We do not claim to have purchased or physically tested the products ourselves; our strength is combining and weighing many sources of evidence into one clear recommendation.

About the Ratings

The star ratings in our guides are the marketplace’s own customer ratings (for example the Amazon star score and its number of ratings), fetched and refreshed automatically through our data pipeline. We do not invent or adjust them. What IS ours: which products make the list, their ranking, the badges and the analysis. Marketplace ratings change as new customer reviews arrive, so the numbers you see here can differ slightly from the live marketplace between refreshes.

Prices and Availability

Prices and availability shown or implied in our guides can change at any time. The retailer’s product page is always leading.

Questions

Want to know more about how we work? Email us through the contact page; we are happy to explain.