Who Writes Here

I’m Andrea Bartlett, the site’s founder. I write and publish the articles here. Ken Bartlett operates the site and handles its technical and administrative side. Neither of us has veterinary credentials or formal medical training.

What I do have is years of daily, hands-on experience caring for a disabled dog. My dachshund Heidi has IVDD. She was paralyzed and never recovered the ability to walk. Everything on this site comes from living that caregiving experience: the practical parts and the hard emotional parts.

How Articles Are Researched

Topics come from a planned queue for each condition, shaped by the questions owners actually search for and ask in communities such as Reddit’s r/AskVet. Each article is grounded in:

  • Personal experience — what I’ve done, observed, and learned with Heidi since her diagnosis. First-person experience appears only in IVDD articles, because IVDD is the condition I’ve lived with.
  • Veterinary guidance — conversations with Heidi’s care team (her neurologist and rehabilitation specialist) inform how I think about disabled dog care, though they don’t review individual articles.
  • Community knowledge — the IVDD, DM, and disabled dog owner communities contain hard-won practical knowledge from people in the same situation as you. I draw on that.
  • Published sources — I link to VCA Hospitals, the AKC, the Merck Veterinary Manual, and peer-reviewed research when I reference specific medical claims. When I can’t source a claim, I frame it as personal observation or a general range rather than a fact.

Gear Recommendations

The Recommended Gear section lists products from Heidi’s actual care routine, organized by category. Selection works like this: a product earns a place on the list by being something I’ve used personally, something that comes up consistently as a trusted recommendation in the IVDD or DM communities, or something a rehabilitation specialist recommended during Heidi’s care. Products are not listed because a company offered me a discount or reached out requesting coverage.

Some product pages contain affiliate links, primarily Amazon links. If you buy through one, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. That commission helps keep the site running. It does not influence what gets listed or how it’s described. I’d rather have fewer products with honest assessments than a longer list padded with things I can’t vouch for.

If a product I’ve listed turns out to be discontinued, reformulated, or no longer recommended by the rehab community, I update or remove the page. The goal is for the gear section to be as honest as the articles.

Full details are on the disclosures page.

The Vet Finder Directory

Articles about urgent or specialty conditions show an embedded Vet Finder so readers can locate a neurologist, surgeon, or rehab therapist near them. The directory is unpaid and unbiased. No clinic has ever paid to be listed, there is no listing fee or sponsorship arrangement, and no “preferred placement” tier exists. Practices are included strictly on credentials and capabilities. If a practice is on the list, that’s the only reason.

External Sources

When an article links out to an outside authority — VCA Hospitals, the AKC, the Merck Veterinary Manual, university veterinary schools (Cornell, UC Davis, University of Missouri), the OFA, the ACVS, the ACVIM, and similar organizations — the citation is an editorial decision. No external source has ever paid, sponsored, gifted, or otherwise compensated this site to be cited or linked to, and none ever will. When I cite an outside authority it is because the claim genuinely benefits from a reference and that source is the most credible one I can point to.

The pool of organizations the article-writing pipeline is allowed to cite is a curated allowlist I maintain. I add a source only when I judge it independently authoritative on the topic, and every outside link in a new article is checked against that allowlist and confirmed live before the article ships. Money never changes hands for inclusion.

On Quantitative Claims

I try not to publish statistics I can’t trace to a real source. When an article makes a specific quantitative claim (percentages, dose ranges, recovery timelines) it should link to a source or be framed clearly as a general range or personal experience.

If you see a number that doesn’t have a citation and doesn’t feel right, please tell me. I’d rather fix it than leave something misleading up.

Keeping Articles Current

Medical and caregiving information evolves — new research lands, treatments shift, products go in and out of favor. Stale content on a health site is worse than no content. Each month, the oldest article in the library goes back through the same AI-assisted process to be updated, strengthened, or corrected. When search data or a reader report shows a specific article needs work, I schedule it for a refresh sooner. I read every refreshed article before it goes live.

Each article shows its original publish date. An “Updated” date appears when the article’s facts, advice, or sections have meaningfully changed since then. Link fixes and formatting changes don’t count. If an article’s newest date is more than a year old, treat that as a signal to double-check the advice against current vet guidance.

How AI Fits In

This is a small, family-run operation. To produce and maintain a growing library while doing hands-on daily care with Heidi, I use AI for drafting — currently Anthropic’s Claude (Sonnet) — working from a detailed prompt I wrote that encodes my voice, my caregiving experience, the editorial rules on this page, and the structure I expect from a finished article. Refreshes use the same workflow.

Before a new article can publish, automated checks verify that every outside link comes from a curated list of authoritative sources and is still live, that no internal link is broken, and that first-person caregiving experience appears only in IVDD articles. I read every new article before it’s published, and correct or reject drafts that get something wrong.

The ideas, the framework, the editorial standards, and the lived experience this site is built on are mine. The drafting is AI-assisted.

Every article ends with a reminder to consult your veterinarian before changing your dog’s care plan. That isn’t there as a formality. Nothing on this site replaces a vet who has examined your specific dog.

What This Site Is Not

This site is not a substitute for veterinary care. I say this often because I mean it every time.

Caring for a disabled dog involves real medical decisions: medications, surgery, rehabilitation protocols, quality of life assessments. Those decisions belong with a veterinarian who has examined your dog. My role is to help you understand what you’re facing, ask better questions at the vet, and feel less alone at 2am when you’re worried. The medical plan belongs with your vet.

Contact

If you find an error, a claim that seems wrong, or something that needs updating, please reach out through the Support page. I read everything.

Disabled Dog Care is published by Andrea Bartlett. All content is intended to complement — not replace — professional veterinary care.