Contact
Corrections especially welcome. We would rather be told we are wrong than stay wrong.
Site owner: this page needs a working contact route before you launch - Amazon check for one when
they review Associates applications, and a review site with no way to reach it does not look credible to
readers either. Since you are publishing anonymously, a Netlify contact form is the better option than
an email address: add netlify and name="contact" attributes to a plain HTML
<form> and Netlify handles submissions with no backend and nothing personal on display.
If you would rather use email, a role address like hello@bestdogball.com reveals nothing.
[hello@bestdogball.com]
We read everything and try to reply within a few days.
What we are glad to hear about
- Corrections. If something on this site is factually wrong, tell us. We will fix it and note that we have.
- Questions about your specific dog. If the guides do not cover your situation, ask - the answer often becomes a page.
- Your own experience with a ball. Particularly if it contradicts us. A ball that failed in a week for you is useful information.
- Products we have missed. No promise to review it, but we will look.
What we cannot help with
- Veterinary questions. We are not vets. If your dog has swallowed something, is in pain, or is struggling to breathe, contact a vet immediately rather than emailing a website.
- Order problems. We do not sell anything. If an order has gone wrong, it is with Amazon or the retailer, and they will sort it out much faster than we can.
- Paid reviews, sponsored posts and guest posts with links. We do not do any of these at any price, and we do not reply to offers.
For brands
We buy every product we review and do not accept samples. If you think we have got something factually wrong about your product, we genuinely want to know and will correct it. If you want to pay to appear here, the answer is no.
Press and media
Happy to comment on dog toy safety, ball sizing and choking risk. Use the address above.
How we test
Every ball on this site is bought at full retail price with our own money. Nothing here is a sample sent by a brand, and no manufacturer sees a review before it is published.
Testing runs over a minimum of six weeks with four dogs chosen for genuinely different jobs:
- A Labrador who fetches hard but chews gently - the volume tester. If a ball survives him it has survived a lot of repetitions.
- A Staffordshire Bull Terrier who destroys most things within a fortnight. He decides every durability verdict on this site; the other three rarely mark a ball at all.
- A whippet who runs flat out and catches in the air. She is the reason we care about how a ball behaves in flight rather than just on the ground - whether it tumbles or flies true, whether it is light enough to catch cleanly at speed without jarring, and whether the surface gives enough grip for a dog to take it out of the air rather than bat it away. A ball that is fine to pick up off the grass can be genuinely unpleasant to catch, and nothing else in the group would have shown us that.
- A twelve-kilo terrier cross used to check whether smaller mouths can carry a ball comfortably, and whether the weight is manageable over a full walk.
We record bounce height from a two-metre drop onto paving, whether the ball floats in still water and how much of it sits above the waterline, throwing distance with a standard launcher, catchability in flight, and the physical state of the ball at two, four and six weeks. Balls that split, delaminate or lose their shape inside six weeks do not make the recommendations regardless of brand.
Where we have not tested something, we say so on the page rather than inventing a verdict. That currently applies to the automatic ball launchers, the light-up ball category, and some of the squeaky and treat-dispensing products - each carries a visible notice.