It’s Fourth of July weekend and America is opening back up! As we’re in the Roaring 20’s this holiday weekend more backyard bangs and booms are expected this year. Calming your dog’s nerves to help with separation anxiety induced by going back to work, or firework noise, is likely on your mind. What about pet CBD?

If you are like most pet owners, you’ve heard the buzz about Pet CBD and all of it’s claims and wondered to yourself “which products actually work?”.  I personally have held off on endorsing any CBD brands due to the difficulty of cutting through the clutter and verifying which brands are better than others, as well as little research and product quality testing oversight. (All of the links in this article are for editorial content and no paid or affiliate endorsements.)

Most pet CBD brands will publish 3rd party lab testing results showing the amount of CBD vs THC levels in its products but those labs are funded by the CBD brands to conduct the testing. The argument can be made that because the labs are paid directly by the hemp companies, they are not really all that independent.

Then, to complicate things further there are thousands of little white label brands popping up every week. The investment needed to white label and start your own pet CBD brand has a low entry point so almost anyone can start a CBD brand. These little brands do not have the experience or science behind them to recommend dosing.

So what’s a pet owner to do? I’ve been asked this hundreds of times in the past couple of years and there is not one short answer. Below is a thoughtful list I created of 5 steps to selecting a pet CBD brand.

5 tips for selecting pet CBD 

1. Research The Company Before You Buy- Look at the overall company who is making the pet CBD product. Is this a new business you’ve never heard of or a trusted, established business based on science? Given the lack of oversight be careful and really dig into the brand. Reading the FDA regulations is helpful too.
2. Find Out Who Grew The Crops- As well as who is growing the hemp crops and look for organic hemp. High Falls Hemp is very transparent and named their brand from the town Upstate NY where the hemp is farmed. The CEO is hands on and involved closely in quality control. They make is very easy to find and read their lab reports. CBD veteran Charlott’s Web makes is a little harder requiring you to enter a “lot number” from a bottle you purchased.
3. Beware of Licensing- If it’s a licensed brand like Martha Stewart’s new pet CBD brand check out who is actually manufacturing the product. Martha has a partnership with the publicly traded Canadian Cannabis company Canopy Growth and Snoop Dog which is more credible than a licensing deal with a company that doesn’t specialize in Hemp.
4. Look for clinical research-Cornell University College of Veterinary Sciences conducted an 8 month double blind study on benefits of CBD in dogs in conjunction with ElleVet Sciences to determine proper and safe CBD dosages for dogs.
5. Ask friends- Speak to friends and and read social media review threads for honest feedback. Reviews on the on company websites are not as credible.