Editorial Policy

Effective date: May 21, 2026 Last updated: October 17, 2026

Updated October 17, 2026: Sarah Bennett and Leo Bennett are pen names, and a draft may use AI assistance. A person checks the cited sources and is responsible for the published text.

Senior Dog Daily is an independent publication about senior dog care. The bylines Sarah Bennett and Leo Bennett are pen names for a small editorial team. This page explains how articles are researched, where information stops and advice for a specific dog begins, and what readers can hold the publication to.

A short, plain-English summary

We are not veterinarians, and the site has no medical reviewer.
Every health claim on the Site is sourced. If a claim cannot be sourced, it is not published.
Drafting may use AI assistance. A person checks claims against the cited sources, and a person is responsible for the published text. Photographs of dogs are not generated with AI.
Recommendations are independent of affiliate compensation. A product is not recommended because it pays a commission.
If we get something wrong, we correct it in the open and date the correction.

The rest of this page is the detailed version of the same thing.

1. Who we are

Senior Dog Daily is published under the pen names Sarah Bennett and Leo Bennett. A small editorial team does the research. A person checks the sources and is responsible for the text that goes live.

Lucy, a Border Collie, is why the site exists. She was adopted from a rescue at about age 3 and was 7 when the About page stated that age. That is the account this site gives. It is not a veterinary case history.

Nobody on the team is a veterinarian, a veterinary technician, an animal nutritionist, or another licensed pet-care professional. The site does not speak for a clinic, a manufacturer, a retailer, or a trade association.

2. What we cover and what we do not

We cover: the day-to-day reality of caring for senior dogs, generally age 7 and older, daily routines, mobility, nutrition, supplements, equipment, cognitive changes, end-of-life decisions, and the products, brands, and services owners encounter along the way.

We do not cover: diagnosis, treatment plans, drug dosing, or anything else that should come from a licensed veterinarian who has examined your specific dog. We also do not cover unrelated topics (training puppies, exotic pets, livestock) where we have no special insight.

When we are out of our depth on a topic, we say so and point you to someone who is not.

3. Our editorial stance

Senior Dog Daily takes a proactive, preventive stance. Most senior dog content online is written for owners whose dog is already sick. We are written for owners whose dog is 5 to 9 years old and who want to prepare, to build a baseline, understand what is coming, and make decisions early when they are cheaper and less stressful.

That stance shapes what we write about, how we phrase things, and what we recommend. It does not shape what the underlying evidence says.

4. Sources we rely on

Every health, nutrition, or medication claim on the Site is sourced. Where possible we link directly to the source in the article. Our typical sources, in roughly the order we prefer them:

Peer-reviewed veterinary research. Articles indexed in PubMed and journals such as the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, Veterinary Clinics of North America, and similar.
Veterinary association guidelines. Position statements, practice guidelines, and consensus statements from organizations including the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA), the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM), and the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA).
Veterinary reference works. The Merck Veterinary Manual, the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine library, VCA Animal Hospitals' veterinary content, and Veterinary Partner (the pet-owner-facing content site operated by the Veterinary Information Network, VIN).
Licensed veterinarians on the record. Quotes from named veterinarians published in peer-reviewed work, edited veterinary publications, or recorded interviews, with credential, institution, and link to the original.
Manufacturer documentation, for product specifics only. Ingredient lists, dosing instructions, certifications, and recall notices come from the manufacturer or from the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.
Seller pages for price. A price in an article is the figure read on the seller's page, with the date of that reading.

We add a "Sources" section at the bottom of any article that makes meaningful health claims, listing the works we drew from.

5. Sources we will not use

We will not base an article on:

Marketing copy presented as evidence.
Studies funded by the manufacturer of the product being recommended, unless the funding source is disclosed and the study has been independently corroborated.
Anonymous "experts," fictional veterinarians, or quotes we cannot attribute to a real, named person on the record.
Social-media anecdotes presented as data.
AI-generated text or summaries of veterinary research that a person has not checked against the original source.

If the only source we can find for a claim is one of the above, we drop the claim.

6. How an article is made

Every article on Senior Dog Daily goes through the following steps:

Topic selection. A topic starts from a real question: one senior dog owners ask, one a reader sends, or one the sources leave unanswered.
Source gathering. Before writing, we pull together the peer-reviewed studies, association guidelines, and reference-work entries that bear on the topic. If sources are thin or contradictory, we say so in the article rather than smoothing it over.
Draft. A draft may be prepared with AI assistance. The published wording is what a person accepts.
Fact and source check. A person checks factual claims, including figures, symptom lists, breed risks, product specs, and prices, against the cited source before publication. A number that cannot be checked is removed or given a range and an as-of date.
Editorial responsibility. A person reads the draft before publication and is responsible for the version that goes live, including sentences that overstate a source or cross into care for one specific dog.
Publication. The article goes live with the pen-name byline, an "Effective date," and a "Last updated" date.
Refresh cadence. Articles that drive significant traffic, or that touch on fast-moving topics (medications, recalls, pricing), are reviewed at least every 90 days. Other articles are reviewed at least once a year. Material updates are noted at the top of the article with the update date and a short summary of what changed.

7. Use of AI in our workflow

We are transparent about what AI does on Senior Dog Daily.

AI may be used to:

Propose an outline or a headline, the same way a search engine proposes a page to open.
Check spelling, grammar, and readability of a draft.
Summarize a long document as a starting point for reading. The summary is not the source. The cited page is.

A person still does the following:

Checks a quote, a statistic, a citation, or a research summary against the original source before it is published. An unchecked AI summary is not a source.
Decides the published wording and is responsible for it.
Publishes by hand. Nothing on the site is auto-published.
Keeps photographs of dogs out of AI image generation. Those images often get breed anatomy wrong.

The site does not allow its content to be used to train, fine-tune, or evaluate AI models without written permission. See the Terms of Service, Section 8.

8. Editorial independence from sponsors and affiliates

Senior Dog Daily earns money primarily from affiliate commissions and, when relevant, from clearly labeled sponsored content. Our Affiliate Disclosure explains how those relationships work in detail.

What matters here is what those relationships do not do:

They do not decide which products we include in a guide.
They do not decide where a product ranks in a comparison.
They do not allow a brand to edit, approve, or veto an article.
They do not buy us silence about a product's downsides. Every recommendation lists what we did and did not like.
They do not buy positive coverage. If a brand asks us to write favorably about a product we would not recommend on its merits, we decline.

When a piece is sponsored, meaning a brand paid us a flat fee to write about a specific product, that is disclosed prominently at the top of the article, separately from affiliate disclosures, and the same editorial standards apply.

9. Conflicts of interest

We disclose anything that could reasonably affect how a reader interprets an article:

Affiliate relationships, on every article that contains affiliate links.
Sponsored arrangements, on every sponsored article.
Free or discounted products provided by a brand for review.
Any other compensation, gift, or relationship with a person or company mentioned in the article.

We do not currently work with a paid veterinary medical reviewer. If we add one in the future, we will identify them by name and credentials on the relevant articles and on a dedicated reviewer page, and we will not place a "Medically reviewed by" badge on any article without an actual reviewer behind it.

10. Author bylines, dates, and what they mean

Byline. Sarah Bennett, sometimes with Leo Bennett, is a pen name for the editorial team. It is not a veterinary credential and not a claim that two named individuals wrote the page by hand.
Effective date. When the article was first published.
Last updated. The most recent date on which the article was reviewed or revised. A recent date means the article was checked. A date older than 12 months means a review is due.
Reviewer line. There is no medical reviewer. The site does not use a "Medically reviewed by" line.

11. Photographs and images

Photographs captioned as Lucy are photographs of that dog, adjusted only for exposure and crop.
Stock photography is licensed from sources such as Unsplash or paid stock providers and is not presented as Lucy or as a home on this site.
The site does not use AI-generated images of dogs. Those images often misrepresent breed anatomy, coat, and age.
Product photography comes from the manufacturer's media kit or the affiliate network. A product photo is not a claim that the product was used at home.

12. Corrections

We make mistakes. When we do, we correct them in the open.

Where the correction lives. Above the article body, in a clearly labeled block ("Correction, May 21, 2026") describing what was wrong and what we changed.
What counts as a correction. Factual errors (wrong number, wrong dose, wrong breed risk, wrong price), misattributed quotes, broken or replaced sources, and significant updates that change the article's recommendation.
What does not count as a correction. Routine refreshes (price update, link refresh, typo fix). Those are reflected silently in the "Last updated" date.
How to flag one. Email sarah@seniordogdaily.com with "Correction" in the subject line and a link to the article. We respond within seven days. If you are right, we publish the correction within fourteen days of confirming it.

13. Reader feedback

We read every email. If you write us about an article, to disagree, to add information, to share your own experience, we take it seriously. We may quote you, with your permission, in a future article or update.

Email: sarah@seniordogdaily.com

14. The medical-advice line

Throughout the Site, we keep a clear line between information and advice for your dog.

Information is general, what a condition is, how it tends to present, what the published guidelines say, what categories of treatment exist, what a class of product does.
Advice for your dog depends on examination, history, bloodwork, breed, age, weight, and a hundred other variables we cannot see from here.

We give information. We do not give advice for your specific dog. For that, please see a licensed veterinarian.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this Editorial Policy from time to time. When we do, we change the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. Material changes, adding or removing source categories, changing our AI policy, beginning or ending a relationship with a medical reviewer, are noted at the top of the page for at least 30 days.

16. Contact

Questions, suggestions, or feedback about how we work:

Email: sarah@seniordogdaily.com Subject line: "Editorial"

The Senior Dog Daily editorial team, publishing as Sarah and Leo Bennett