VetIQ vs Vet's Best: Two Budget Hip and Joint Chews Compared

The first thing to say is that I only bought one of these. I fed Honey the VETIQ Glucosamine Hip & Joint Chews for about four months, from early February into early June, and I have never fed her Vet's Best. What I know about Vet's Best comes from a label I read twice at my kitchen table, a listing I went through line by line, and a friend from church whose dog has been on it for a year. So this is not a side by side test. It is a comparison of two labels, done the way I used to answer reference questions at the library: find the source, read it carefully, and write down what it actually says.

If you want the short answer, here it is. Both are budget soft chews built around glucosamine. Neither one is a cure for arthritis, and I will not pretend otherwise. I picked VETIQ because the amount of glucosamine was printed plainly on the tub and one tub held 180 chews, which meant I was not back at the computer reordering every few weeks. My friend picked Vet's Best for her dog and has been happy with it for a year. Which of them fits your dog is a question for your vet, and I mean that sincerely.

	VETIQ Hip & Joint Chews	Vet's Best Hip & Joint
Form	Soft chew, chicken flavor	Soft chew
Glucosamine per chew	600 mg glucosamine HCL, printed on the tub	Glucosamine is the base of its formula, with the amount printed on its own label
Other actives listed	Fish oil 280 mg, krill 210 mg, plus MSM	MSM and a joint blend, per the label
Chews per container	180 soft chews to a tub	A smaller count, so more reordering
Feeding directions	Chews by weight, printed on the tub	Chews by weight, printed on its label
Track record I can speak to	Four months in my own kitchen	One year in a friend's household
Best for	A first tub that will last months	A smaller try, or a dog already doing well on it

Where VETIQ Wins

The label is the reason I bought it. The tub I brought home lists glucosamine HCL at 600 mg per soft chew, fish oil at 280 mg, and krill at 210 mg. I am not a veterinarian and I am not going to tell you what those numbers ought to be for a seventy pound Labrador mix. What I can tell you is that I could read them, in my own kitchen, without hunting through a website on my telephone. When you are standing there with a stiff dog and a decision to make, a number you can read counts for a great deal more than a word like premium.

The second thing is the size of the tub. 180 soft chews is a real amount of chews, and for a dog Honey's size at one chew with breakfast, that carried me from early February to early June. I was not reordering. I was not running out on a Sunday night. The chews are chicken flavor and she took every single one of them as though it were a treat, which matters more than people admit. A supplement your dog will not eat is money you have set on fire, and I have done that with other things.

The tub itself is nine inches tall, about seven wide and three deep, and it sits on the shelf with room to spare, which sounds like a small thing until your cabinet is already full of dog things. It weighs about a pound and a half. I could lift it one handed while holding a leash in the other, and at my age that counts for something. It went from the shelf to the counter and back again twice a day for four months and never once got in my way.

Where Vet's Best Wins

Vet's Best comes in a smaller container, and I want to be fair about what that means. If you are not sure yet whether your dog will take a soft chew at all, or whether you want to be committed to a big tub sitting in the cabinet, a smaller one is the friendlier place to begin. I bought a large tub on my very first try because I was in a hurry to do something. That worked out, but it was luck as much as judgment, and I would tell a friend to think it through.

The other thing Vet's Best has that VETIQ does not, in my house anyway, is a longer report. My friend from church, whose name I will leave out of this, has had her dog on Vet's Best for about a year and says the dog gets up easier in the morning. I have no reason to doubt her and I am not going to wave that away. A year in a household I trust is a longer record than the four months I can speak to myself, and I would be a poor librarian if I pretended otherwise.

What Four Months Actually Looked Like

I first noticed Honey getting stiff after her naps in January. She is a ten year old yellow Labrador mix, about seventy pounds, and she had started taking the three back porch steps one at a time instead of in one happy bound. She had also begun hesitating before jumping into the back seat of my car. Nothing dramatic. Just slower. If you have lived with an older dog, you know exactly the kind of slow I mean.

I bought the VETIQ chews in early February, before I had seen our vet, mostly because it was an easy yes and I wanted to be doing something instead of just watching her. One chew with breakfast, per the label for her weight, and our vet agreed with that amount when I finally got her in. Honey ate them happily. She is a Labrador. She would eat a shoe if I set it in her bowl and walked away.

By April I thought I saw something. She seemed a little less stiff after her afternoon nap, and she was not hesitating quite as long at the car door. A little. Not a lot. When I am honest with myself, and I have had to be, four months of those chews gave me a small change at best. That small change, or the lack of a bigger one, is what sent me to our vet in early June. She examined Honey and told me it was early arthritis in both hips and mild in the left elbow. No surgery. She started her on Cosequin and a fish oil.

There is one morning I keep coming back to. It was a Tuesday in the middle of April, cold and damp, and I had let Honey out into the yard before I had my coffee. She came up the three porch steps without stopping to think about them, which she had not done since January. Then the very next morning she took them one at a time again. That is the thing about an older dog. You get one good day and you want to build a house on it, and the next day takes the house right back down.

That is when I stopped the VETIQ chews. Not because anything went wrong. Cosequin has glucosamine in it, and I did not want to be doubling up on the same ingredient without being told to. The tub is still on the shelf next to the refrigerator, and I imagine I will finish it out of stubbornness one of these days. I would do the same in reverse if I had been feeding Vet's Best and the vet put Honey on something else.

By April she seemed a little less stiff after her nap and she was not hesitating quite as long at the car door. A little. Not a lot.

A Word About Krill, Fish Oil and MSM

The VETIQ label lists MSM and krill alongside the glucosamine, and fish oil at 280 mg. I put those in the same drawer where I keep the fish oil our vet added in June: things people say help, which I am not qualified to weigh. What I can tell you is that after five months of the pump bottle on her dinner, Honey's coat is softer. I cannot tell you whether that is the oil or the season or the brushing. I am careful about that, because a softer coat is easy to see and easy to over-credit.

I started a notebook in February, on the day I opened the first tub, and I wrote that date on the lid in marker so I would not have to guess later. Every few weeks I would add a line: took the porch steps one at a time, took them both feet down, seemed easier after her nap. Four months of those lines told me more than my memory did, and my memory was busy hoping. When you are watching for a change in a dog you love, you will see one whether or not it is there.

What I would not do is stack three products with overlapping ingredients because each one sounds good on its own. That is how a person ends up giving a dog a great deal more glucosamine than anyone intended, and then wondering why nobody warned them. I stopped the VETIQ chews the same week Cosequin started, for exactly that reason. One product at a time. One change at a time. Write down the date you started it. My notebook has settled more arguments with myself than any website ever has.

Two Things I Would Check Before You Buy Either

The first is the amount per chew, not the word on the front of the tub. Every product in this aisle says glucosamine in large letters. What matters is how much is in each chew and how many chews your dog's weight calls for, because that is the number your vet will want to hear. VETIQ prints 600 mg right there on the label. If a label will not tell you the amount, that silence is your answer, and you can keep your money in your purse.

I did this once in a store aisle with my reading glasses pushed up on my head and a bag of dog food under one arm. I turned a tub over three times looking for the milligrams and never found a number I trusted. I put it back on the shelf. Not because it was a bad product, but because I could not tell what I would be giving her, and I have promised myself I will not guess about that anymore.

The second is the feeding directions for your dog's weight. Honey is about seventy pounds, and she got one chew with breakfast because that is what the label said for her size, and our vet agreed. Do not scale it up because your dog is big, and do not scale it down because she is small, and please do not split chews to make a tub last longer. Read the label and ask. That is the whole of my advice on that point, and it took me a lot of years to be comfortable saying a thing that plainly.

Who Should Buy Which

If your dog is at the very beginning of this, stiff after naps and slow on the porch steps, and you want one tub that will last you months without a lot of fuss, the VETIQ chews are a fair place to start. That is what I did and I do not regret it. Buy one tub, write the date on the lid with a marker, and give it the full run before you decide anything. If you cannot remember when you started, you cannot tell whether it is working, and that is true of every product on this page.

If you would rather begin with a smaller container, or your dog has already done well on Vet's Best, then stay where you are and do not let me talk you out of something that is working. The best supplement is the one your dog will eat, that your vet is willing to sign off on, and that you can keep buying month after month without resenting it. Neither tub here is a diagnosis. If Honey had been limping or holding a leg up, I would have been at the clinic before I was at the computer.