By Bryan Reisberg, Co-founder, Little Chonk Health Dept. Medically reviewed by Dr. John Loftus, PhD, DACVIM in Small Animal Internal Medicine and Nutrition, on 6/17/2026, and Dr. Matthew W. Brunke, DACVSMR, a world-renowned thought-leader in veterinary sports medicine and rehabilitation CCAT, on 6/17/2026.
In 2019, Maxine was four years old when she started limping.
It came and went. Some days she walked fine. Other days I'd watch her bobbing her head as she moved, not quite fluid, not quite right. I took her to our vet. They took x-rays and didn't see much of anything. I took her to a second vet. Same result.
It wasn't until someone referred me to a veterinary orthopedic specialist in Maryland that I got an answer. They did imaging. They saw a slight tear in her shoulder. And they told me that, more importantly, Maxine had early onset osteoarthritis, common in short-legged dogs, caused by the two bones in her leg growing at slightly different lengths and rubbing against the joints.
She was four. They told me there was no cure. They told me it would get worse.
I had never dealt with anything like this before. I didn't know what to ask. I didn't know what to do next. You have this perfect, adorable creature who can't take care of herself, and suddenly it's all on you.
For years, I did what I was told
After the diagnosis, we started everything they recommended; hydrotherapy, laser therapy, weight management, low impact exercise. I read everything I could find about joint care in dogs, and what kept coming back was the same answer: there's no cure, there's no quick fix, and the best you can do is slow the progression with a multimodal approach over the long term.
That part I understood. I was ready for the long road.
The specialist also recommended a joint supplement. I won't name it. It was the market leader, the one you see on the shelf of almost every vet clinic, the one everyone recommends, the one that comes up first when you search. I started Maxine on it the same week. I didn't think twice. I trusted the practitioners. I assumed they knew what was right, that they'd been there, done that, seen what worked. I also trusted the brand. It seemed credible. All the marketing seemed legit, and I'm a savvy consumer.
So that's what we did. Every day, for years. A chew with her food, the therapies on the schedule, the walks adjusted to her energy. Some days she walked smoothly. Some weeks were worse than others. We had bone fragments removed at one point. That's the texture of arthritis management: some days are good, some days are bad, some weeks are good, some weeks are bad, and you keep showing up.
Around 2023, I took her in for one of her routine checkups. They told me her arthritis had progressed to severe.
We had known this was the trajectory. They'd warned me at diagnosis it would get worse. But hearing "severe" was different from understanding it in the abstract, and something shifted for me that day. I had been doing everything I was told for four years. I had spent real money on a supplement that the entire industry pointed me to. And my dog's joints were getting worse. I knew they were getting worse, but I didn't trust that EVERYTHING was working as advertised… so I dug deeper...
ChatGPT had just become widely available. I sat down and started asking it questions I'd never thought to ask before. What's actually in this supplement I've been giving her? What are the therapeutic doses for these ingredients? Is there peer reviewed research behind any of this?
Within hours, I had concrete information from verified, credible sources. I had a working answer to a question I should have asked years earlier: what's actually in the best dog hip and joint supplement, and is any of it backed by science?
What I actually found
The first thing I looked at was the ingredient panel of the supplement I'd been giving Maxine for four years. The two headline ingredients were glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate. So I started reading every label on every hip and joint supplement for dogs I could find, the highest rated, the most recommended, the ones the vets pointed to. Almost all of them had the same two ingredients front and center.
I went looking for the science. What I found was that the case for glucosamine and chondroitin in dogs was built on decades old research, and that the peer reviewed work published in recent years had moved on. Newer studies were showing these ingredients were no more effective than a placebo at managing joint discomfort.
That was a big claim to be making in my own head, so I didn't trust it. I'm not a vet. I'm not a researcher. I had a hypothesis, and I wanted somebody who actually knew what they were talking about to tell me whether I was on the right track or being stupid about it.
I used our Instagram account to reach out to vets with serious credentials, not generalists, but thought leaders in nutraceuticals and orthopedic science. One of them was Dr. John Loftus, PhD, DACVIM in Small Animal Internal Medicine and Nutrition, on faculty at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. I sent him a version of: here's who I am, here's what I'm thinking, am I wrong about this? He confirmed it, other vets I reached out to confirmed it too - the scientific opinion on these ingredients had turned. Most vets weren't up on the newer research yet, because it's a newer thought, newer science, and the ingredients had been the standard recommendation for so long that there was no reason to keep checking.
So why were they still in almost every product, and still on every vet clinic shelf? The supplement market for pets is unregulated. The ingredients are cheap to source and easy to market. The companies selling them have sales teams whose job is to get the product on the shelf. If you're a company making good money on a supplement that customers believe is working, you don't stop selling it. They don't have to prove it works, they just have to sell you on it.
And here's the thing about customers believing it's working. Joint care is multimodal. If your dog is on a supplement and also doing low impact exercise and also managing weight and also getting hydrotherapy, and they seem a bit better, what's actually responsible? You don't know without controlled studies to identify and isolate the variable that's leading to meaningful change.
I include myself in that. For four years I thought the supplement was doing something, because Maxine was relatively stable and we were doing everything else right too. If somebody had told me back then that this would fix my dog, I'd have bought it. I did buy it. That's how the industry works.
The questions I started asking
By the time I'd reverse engineered why the supplement I'd trusted for four years wasn't working, I had a working list of questions. They weren't theoretical. Each one came from a specific way I'd been misled, by a label, by a recommendation, by a marketing claim I hadn't thought to interrogate.
These are the questions I'd ask now, before putting any joint supplement in my dog.
Are the dosages disclosed, and are they at therapeutic levels?
The most important information on a supplement label is how much of each active ingredient is in the chew. If a brand lists ingredients without listing doses, or hides doses inside a proprietary blend, they're telling you they don't want you to know. And when the doses are disclosed, the next question is whether they're at therapeutic levels. Dosage level is as important as the ingredient itself. Ingredients are only effective at proper dosing levels, and if they're under-dosed, it's just window-dressing. Might as well not even be in the product.
Is the science peer reviewed, recent, and conducted in dogs?
A lot of supplement marketing leans on research that was either done in humans, done decades ago, or done by the manufacturer themselves. I wouldn't say manufacturer studies don't count. but oftentimes they're misleading to simply prove the efficacy of the product. There are creative ways to mount studies that do that. What counts is peer reviewed research, in dogs, ideally published in the last few years. The reason I emphasize recent is that the field moves. Glucosamine and chondroitin had research behind them once. The newer peer reviewed work has moved on. If a company is still leaning on studies from twenty years ago, ask why. Science is never done. Period.
Are the vets actually involved, or are their names just on a website?
Almost every supplement brand has a vet on their site. The question is what that vet actually does. Did they formulate the product? Did they sign off on the doses? Are they on record being asked hard questions, or are they a photo and a credential line? Vets get paid to lend their name to products all the time. That doesn't mean they're involved in making them. Look for vets with serious credentials, board certifications, faculty appointments, published research, and look for evidence that they're actually shaping the product, not endorsing it.
Are the ingredients the ones that have the strongest evidence?
For joint support, the ingredients that actually have research behind them are EPA and DHA, the omega 3s, which are the building blocks of joint health. Green lipped mussel, which has good evidence at the right dose. Hyaluronic acid, for joint lubrication. There are others worth looking at, but those three are the foundation. If the front of the label is shouting about ingredients you've never heard of and the back of the label is light on the ones you have, that's a flag.
Is the brand honest about what the supplement can't do?
This is the one that separates serious brands from marketing companies. A joint supplement will not cure arthritis. It will not undo damage. It will not work on its own. Anyone saying this product will fix your dog is full of shit. Healthy joint maintenance is not as easy as saying a supplement will simply solve the problem. Joint care is multimodal: supplements, weight management, low impact exercise, sometimes therapies like hydrotherapy or laser, and regular vet care. If a brand is telling you their chew will fix your dog, they're not being real with you.
What I learned along the way
A few things shifted for me through this process that have stuck.
The first was a clearer understanding of what to expect from a generalist vet. I love vets. I believe in the work they do, and I'm grateful for the ones who've helped Maxine through this. But going to a generalist for joint supplement advice is a bit like going to a general practitioner for a wrist fracture. They can point you in a direction, but the deep knowledge sits with specialists. The vets who recommended the standard supplement to me in 2019 weren't doing anything wrong. They were going off what had been the recommendation for years. It's not their job to keep up with every shift in the peer reviewed literature on every ingredient in every category of pet supplement. When the question is specialized (i.e. joint care, nutrition, orthopedic condition) the answer should come from a specialist too.
The second was learning to read my dog more carefully. Dogs don't show pain the way humans do. They don't complain. They don't tell you their hips ache when they get up in the morning. So you have to watch, really watch. Are they slow to get up? Sore after a long walk? Slowing down sooner than they used to? The earlier you catch a change, the more you can do about it. I had four years where I thought Maxine was managing fine because she was still walking, still eating, still happy to see me at the door. She was also progressively losing joint function the whole time. Looking back, the signs were there. I just didn't know where or how I was supposed to be looking.
The third was learning how to use AI as a research tool without trusting it blindly. ChatGPT is what got me started on this. I'd ask it questions about ingredients, doses, mechanisms, and then I'd go validate what it told me, against peer reviewed studies, against vets I trusted, against the people who actually formulate these products. AI is useful for getting your bearings in a field you know nothing about. It's not a substitute for talking to people who've spent their careers studying the thing you're asking about. For me, it was the doorway, not the answer.
What we built, and why we built it that way
At some point the research stopped being about finding a better supplement to buy and started being about building one. I'd lost trust in the products on the market, and I had a list of everything I thought they were getting wrong. So I decided to build the thing I'd been looking for and couldn't find.
I started with the people. The first vet I'd reached out to, Dr. John Loftus, PhD, DACVIM in Small Animal Internal Medicine and Nutrition, former faculty at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, became part of our veterinary board. So did Dr. Matthew W. Brunke, DACVSMR, a world-renowned thought-leader in veterinary sports medicine and rehabilitation CCAT, and Dr. Josie Horchak DVM, a small animal vet with expertise in aging veterinary care. What mattered to me about this group wasn't the credentials on paper, though those matter. It was that every one of them came into this with a healthy skepticism of the supplement industry. They weren't names I paid to sit on a website. They pushed back on me and on the formulation, and really cared to formulate something meaningful.
The formulation started with the ingredients that actually have evidence behind them, at doses that actually do something. EPA and DHA, the omega 3s, are the foundation. They work by modulating the body's inflammatory response, which is what drives a lot of joint discomfort. [MECHANISM TK: vet review] They're our most important ingredient, and we packed them in at therapeutic levels, which is also why the chew has a fishy smell. I decided early I'd rather have a chew that smells like fish and works than one that smells like nothing and doesn't. We found dogs also really love the taste. We included green lipped mussel, which has good evidence at the right dose and contributes its own anti-inflammatory compounds [MECHANISM TK: vet review], and hyaluronic acid, which is a natural component of joint fluid and supports lubrication in the joint [MECHANISM TK: vet review]. Every dose is disclosed on the label. There's no proprietary blend hiding how much of anything is in there.
We made it a soft chew, because the easiest supplement to administer is the one your dog actually wants to eat, and a supplement only works if it gets taken every day. Then we spent a long time on who would make it. We had conversations with over thirty contract manufacturers before choosing one, and the deciding question was whether they'd let us film inside the facility. Most won't. You can draw your own conclusions about why a manufacturer wouldn't want anyone filming how a product is made. The one we chose let me film the whole thing, start to finish, how the chew is made, how they run safety and quality inspections, who works there. The facility is GMP certified and NASC certified. I wanted to know exactly who was making what my dog would eat every day, and I wanted to be able to show our customers the same thing.
How to find the best dog hip and joint supplement for your dog
If you take nothing else from my experience, take this. Here's how to evaluate any joint supplement before you give it to your dog, whether it's one of ours or not. It matters throughout the life of your dog if they're a breed prone to joint issues. preventative care is important, so building a healthy foundation early will help as they age.
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Are the doses disclosed? Every active ingredient should have its amount listed on the label. If a product hides quantities inside a proprietary blend, assume it's because the doses are too low to impress you.
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Are the doses at therapeutic levels? A disclosed dose still has to be high enough to do something. An ingredient below its effective dose is there for the label, not for your dog.
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Is the science recent, peer reviewed, and in dogs? Not human studies, not decades old research, not studies the manufacturer ran on itself. The evidence in this field has shifted, and a good product reflects where the research is now.
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Are the vets actually involved? Look past the photos and credential lines. Did the vets formulate the product? Are they board certified specialists in relevant fields? Real involvement looks different from a name on a website.
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Are the right ingredients in it? The ingredients with the strongest evidence for joints are EPA and DHA (omega 3s), green lipped mussel at an effective dose, and hyaluronic acid. If those are missing or underdosed, keep looking.
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Is the brand honest about the limits? A supplement is one part of joint care, not a cure. A company willing to tell you what their product can't do is a company worth trusting.
That last point is the one I'd underline. A joint supplement will not fix your dog on its own. Managing joint discomfort is multimodal and long term: the supplement, weight management, low impact exercise, things you can do at home like passive range of motion work, and regular check ins with your vet. There is no cure for joint discomfort or conditions such as arthritis. Healthy joint maintenance is super important as 80% of dogs will have some kind of joint discomfort over the course of their lifespan. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just trying to sell you something, not improve the health of your pet. The honest goal is to slow the progression and keep your dog comfortable and moving for as long as possible, and that's a goal you can absolutely meet.
In the end, this all started because I couldn't find a joint supplement I trusted for my dog. Today, she has good days and some harder days, the way any dog with a degenerative joint disease does, but she is comfortable, she is moving, and she is still very much herself.
If I could go back to the day she was diagnosed and tell myself one thing, it would be this: it's going to be okay. And it is. No vet could promise me that at the time, and I understand why, they can't set expectations that they can't guarantee. But what I've learned since is that a diagnosis like this feels like the end right up until you start learning. The more you understand, the more manageable it gets. The fear comes from not knowing what to do. The relief comes from finding out.
That's really why I wanted to write this. Not to sell you anything, but to give you the start I didn't have.
If you want to see what these standards look like in a finished product, take a look at Hip & Joint 2.0.
Bryan Reisberg Co-founder & CEO, Little Chonk (and Maxine’s Dad)
