Harnesses, collars and the gear that attaches to an animal. One category is documented here in full; the rest are named as not yet covered rather than padded out.
Updated August 2026 · Harness specs, price and guarantee verified against ruffwear.com on August 10, 2026
The published materials list, the girth chart in both units, the S and M boundary that catches out 27-inch chests, and a guarantee read for its limits rather than its headline (ruffwear.com, August 10, 2026).
Two things decide a harness purchase and neither is the brand. The first is the girth chart, because a harness is sized to the chest rather than the dog's weight, and a dog sitting on a size boundary should buy where exchanges are easy. The second is what the guarantee excludes. Ruffwear's covers defects and its remedy is replacement, but it explicitly excludes damage caused by chewing, which is worth knowing before you assume a premium harness is a lifetime purchase. Both points are documented with their sources in the review.
No US licence, registration or certification regime exists for dog harnesses, collars or leashes, so no accessory in this category is approved or certified by any agency, and a listing claiming otherwise is describing something that does not exist. The only mandatory US toy-safety standard covers children's toys (ASTM F963, made mandatory by 16 CFR 1250), and the FDA lists pet accessories among the products it does not typically regulate (FDA, read August 10, 2026; fda.gov does not serve our server, so that citation keeps its browser read date). What does exist is what each maker chooses to publish: a materials list, a sizing chart, and warranty or guarantee text. Where a maker publishes a certification claim we treat it as a claim and say who made it. Ruffwear, for instance, states a bluesign approval for its shell fabric, and separately describes its gear as rigorously field tested, which is an internal and uncertified claim that we attribute rather than adopt (both read August 10, 2026). This page documents dog gear. Nothing here has been checked for cats, and a harness sized and shaped for a dog is not a cat product.
Collars, leashes, bowls and feeders, carriers, ID tags and car restraints are not covered on this site yet. Each will arrive as a documented review with sources and read dates, or not at all; none of them is linked from this page until its page exists and serves. Car restraints are the category we would most like to do properly, because it is the one where a marketing claim and a crash test are furthest apart, and doing it honestly means finding out what testing, if any, a given maker will actually show you.