about
We write pet care guides for the moment you actually need them — clear, specific, and honest about when the answer is a vet visit instead of an article. Every guide starts from a question real owners ask and ends with something you can do today.
About us
HelpThisPet started with a simple problem: most pet advice online is either too vague to act on or written for a vet, not for the person standing in the kitchen at 11pm wondering if this is serious.
We write the guides we wanted to find. Every article starts from a question real owners ask — what to feed, why the litter box is being avoided, what that limp means — and answers it in order: what’s normal, what’s a warning sign, and what to do next. Health information is checked against veterinary sources, and when the honest answer is “call your vet,” we say so instead of filling the page.
We’re not a clinic and we don’t diagnose. What we do is help you understand what you’re looking at, so you know whether to wait, act, or pick up the phone.
How a guide gets written
Most pet articles online are assembled from other pet articles. Someone reads five pages about hairballs, rewrites them, and publishes a sixth. Nothing new enters the pile, and an error made in 2014 is still being repeated today.
We work the other way round. Every guide starts with a question people actually type at eleven at night, and then we go looking for what is genuinely known about it — published veterinary research, position statements from professional bodies, and guidance from established animal welfare organisations. If a number appears in an article here, we found the study it came from and read what it actually measured.
- Start from the real question. Not “cat scratching behaviour” but “my cat has a scratching post and still shreds the sofa”.
- Find the primary sources. Peer-reviewed veterinary journals first. Professional associations and welfare organisations second. Other blogs never.
- Check what the study actually says. Sample size, what was measured, what the authors themselves concluded — not what a headline claimed about it.
- Write it for the person, not the algorithm. Plain language, specific advice, and a clear statement of what we do not know.
- Cite it. Every guide lists its sources at the bottom so you can check our work.
What you will not find here
- Invented statistics. If we cannot trace a figure to a real source, it does not go in the article.
- Fake urgency. We will not tell you something is an emergency to keep you reading.
- Paid coverage. No brand, manufacturer or veterinary company pays us to write about their products, and we do not accept payment for placement or positive reviews.
- Advice dressed up as diagnosis. We are writers and researchers, not veterinary surgeons.
The honest limits of this site
This is the part most pet sites leave out, so we will be direct about it.
Nobody here can examine your animal. An article can tell you what the research says about cats who stop jumping, or what usually lies behind a dog panting at night, and it can help you work out which questions to ask. It cannot tell you what is wrong with your pet. Those are different things, and confusing them is how people end up waiting three weeks on something that needed a vet on day one.
We also try to be clear about uncertainty. Some questions owners ask have not been studied properly. Where the evidence is thin, we say the evidence is thin, rather than filling the gap with confident-sounding guesswork.
Who writes this
Helpthispet.com is written and edited by LAHDAYLY, who runs the site. The guides are researched against published veterinary literature and the published guidance of recognised welfare and professional organisations, and every article lists what it drew on.
We are not a veterinary practice and do not present ourselves as one. What we offer is careful research, honest writing, and a refusal to publish anything we cannot back up.
Corrections
If you think something here is wrong, tell us. We would rather fix an article than defend it. Corrections to factual errors are made promptly, and if a change is significant we note it on the page.
Email contact@helpthispet.com with the article and what you believe is incorrect. If you can point to a source, even better.
How the site is funded
We intend to fund the site through advertising and affiliate links. Neither is live yet. When they are, any article containing affiliate links will say so at the top, and a commission will never decide what we recommend — the reasoning behind every recommendation is stated in the article so you can judge it for yourself. The full detail is in our privacy policy.
In short
We write the pet guides we wanted to find and could not: specific enough to act on, honest about what is not known, sourced so you can check them, and clear about when the answer is a vet rather than an article.