My Review: Dasuquin For Dogs – Is It Worth All Those Money?
It’s time to review Dasuquin For Dogs, because it’s one of the most popular joint supplements for dogs. I can’t deny it, it has a lot of advantages and good points.
However, its price is extremely high for a supplement of this type. Besides, I’ve noticed it has a few downsides that other reviews aren’t talking about.
So is worth all those money? Can it help your dog better than other supplements? I recommend you to read my honest review to see both the good and the bad side of it, which you won’t find too easily in other place.
Note: I tried to make my review as unbiased as I could. For this reason, I will show you both the good points I found about this supplement and the bad ones. I am not praising/criticizing the product or its company, I am simply telling my opinion about it.
So Let’s Get To The Review
Full Name: Dasuquin With MSM from Nutraflex
Quantity : 150 tablets
Best Actual Price: $70.43
Best Place To Buy It: PetMeds.com because they have 20% off
Designed For: Cartilage problems and arthritis in dogs under 60 lbs. There are several versions depending on weight, so you can choose the best one for your dog. But obviously, the ones for larger dogs cost even more.
My Rating: 7 out of 10
Worth Buying?: Not really. It’s a good product, but it’s way too expensive for what it does and for what it contains. It doesn’t have anything special inside, so I think you can get a cheaper supplement that does pretty much the same thing.
What I Liked About It
- Good ingredients overall
- One bottle should last for at least 2 months
- You can find lots of positive reviews and explanations about it (so it’s legit)
- Does relieve the pain on the long term
What I Didn’t Like About It
- Extremely expensive for what it contains inside
- Pretty slow, it takes around 4-6 weeks until it starts working for real
- I wish there was more chondroitin
- In my opinion, you can get something that works as well for less money
Ingredients (8 out of 10)
This is probably the most important aspect of any supplement, because it can tell you what to expect from it. So after taking a quick look at Dasuquin’s label, I was pretty impressed, but not in the good way.
The ingredients are by no means bad, but I think the price is simply huge for what it contains inside.
1. Glucosamine Hydrochloride (600 mg) – glucosamine is the best when it comes to protecting and rebuilding damaged cartilage, which is a big problem in arthritis. It’s a substance I personally recommend because it makes miracles for human arthritis as well (I’m the best example). I’m pretty satisfied with the dose, because 600 mg should be enough for a smaller to medium dog.
2. MSM (400 mg) – this is a natural substance that both dogs and human have inside their body. It helps joint nourishment and flexibility. Unfortunately, its level decreases with age, that’s why older dogs need it from supplements. In my personal opinion, this dose is a bit high, as I have rarely seen human supplements with 400 mg per serving.
I’m not saying it could harm your dog or anything, but I simply believe it’s not necessary to take such a high dose of MSM. Instead, I would recommend a higher dose of chondroitin (I will explain below why).
3. Sodium Chondrotin Sulfate (250 mg) – chondroitin does pretty much the same things as glucosamine for cartilages, but it’s not as strong. However, it manages to increase the effect of glucosamine. That’s why I recommend people to get a supplement with both glucosamine and chondroitin if they want to see real results.
250 mg isn’t really a small dose, but it could have been higher. Considering there are 600 mg of glucosamine, 350-400 mg of chondroitin would have worked much better, in my opinion.
4. ASU Powder (45 mg) – this is actually a mix of Avocado and Soybean, which I’ve never heard of before. From what I read, it can help unhealthy cartilages and osteoarthritis. But in my opinion, it’s not a major ingredient in this supplement, so I wouldn’t focus too much on its benefits.
PRO #1 – It Really Works
It may not have the most special ingredients I’ve seen, but Dasuquin’s formula is surely effective. I’ve tried lots of joint supplements for humans, so I can pretty much spot a good product from distance. And from this point of view, I can’t really criticize this supplement.
Its ingredients are good enough overall, so it can’t really be ineffective.
And all the positive reviews I came across can stand as a witness. There aren’t many people complaining about this supplement, at least when it comes to effectiveness. They say it works for any kind of arthritis, including hand, hip or even chronic joint pain. You can check out on your own if you’re curious, but I looked at several websites selling Dasuquin and all of them had over 80% positive reviews.
So things are pretty clear then – this supplement isn’t a scam, despite its high price. It works for real.
PRO #2 – Lasts For At Least 70 Days
One of the things I like most about this supplement is that you don’t have to use a lot of pills daily. Most dog supplements recommend taking a different number of pills depending on your dog’s weight.
Now, that’s not a bad thing at all, but sometimes it can make the price deceiving. Here’s what I mean.
Let’s say you buy a 60 tablets joint supplement for about $20. At first sight, it seems like you’ve made a great deal. As your dog takes one tablet per day, that bottle should be enough for 60 days.
But when you look at the back of the label, you can see that the daily dose isn’t necessarily 1 pill per day. If you happen to have a larger dog, he might need 3 or 4 pills, which means that you haven’t made such a great deal.
But Dasuquin is pretty straightforward at this chapter. If your dog has more than 30 lbs, then you have to give him 2 tablets. But otherwise, it’s only one pill per day.
So that means that one bottle should last for at least 70 days. Yes, it is still a very expensive supplement, but this makes things look a bit better. It’s not one of those supplements that finish in 2 weeks, so for me this is a great advantage.
CON #1 – Basic Ingredients For The Price
I’m definitely not a huge fan of Dasuquin’s ingredients, but I can’t say they look too bad. They’re just some regular substances for joint pain together with a powder mix I haven’t seen before. But that’s actually the problem.
At this price, they are way too regular, in my opinion. Considering its price, Dasuquin has a pretty basic ingredient list. And I mean both the substances and their doses. No, it’s not bad at all, but it’s not worth $70 either.
That’s the thing I dislike most about this supplement. It is indeed effective, it contains some decent ingredients but its high price doesn’t have any reason, if you ask me.
So yes, I believe it’s too expensive for what it contains inside.
CON #2 – Needs A Long Time To Work
I just said that this supplement really works, didn’t I? That’s right, but I didn’t mention how fast you should notice an effect.
Judging from my experience, most joint supplement need about 2-3 weeks to work in humans. If it’s a really good one, you can start to see an improvement in the same week, but these are more rare cases.
Well, Dasuquin’s official description claims that it needs about 4-6 weeks to start working for real. To be honest, this is totally huge. 6 weeks is one month and a half, which I don’t think I could wait just to see a minor improvement.
Yes, they do admit that some dogs could respond faster, but I assume that’s a smaller percentage. Otherwise, why would they write a longer period if most dogs responded faster?
So from this point of view, I think it’s a bit slow. It’s hard to see your dog in pain and hope that it will get an improvement in one month. There’s little way you can help him faster with this supplement and that’s a big downside, in my opinion.
CON #3 – Too Little Chondroitin
There’s one thing that bothers me when it comes to this supplement’s ingredients. There is a very high dose of MSM (higher than in many human supplements) and a pretty low dose of chondroitin (compared to glucosamine).
I read several reviews that were saying that the best dose for a small/medium dog would be glucosamine-chondroitin 500-400 mg. Now, I haven’t found any official study about this topic, but I’ve seen this thing in several reviews, which makes me think it’s true.
Because medically speaking, it makes sense. Chondroitin does pretty much the same things as glucosamine, but it also increases its effect. That’s why similar doses of both work best in dogs, in my opinion.
Dasuquin’s dose of chondroitin isn’t bad at all, but I believe it could be a bit higher. Considering there’s a high quantity of MSM (which isn’t that important, in my opinion), I would have preferred some extra mg of chondroitin as well. I just think it would have worked better.
CON #4 – Really High Price
No matter how good was this supplement, we’re still not going to buy it if it’s really expensive. Do you agree? It’s not that you wouldn’t trust it, it’s that you simply can’t afford it. I definitely wouldn’t, on a regular basis.
So does this high price have a good reason? Does this thing contain something more special that makes it better than the rest? In my opinion, the answer is no and this is the biggest problem.
Dasuquin is indeed one of the most expensive joint supplements you can find for your dog. But that doesn’t mean it’s better than all the other ones. In fact, to me it doesn’t seem like it contains some amazing ingredients.
Yes, they are surely not bad, plus they have good doses. But the price is still way too high for these ingredients, that’s what I think.
So in my opinion, this is the biggest downside of this supplement. It doesn’t have any serious reason to cost so much, and I’m sure a lot of people agree with me here.
My Final Verdict – Is It Worth Buying?
Short answer: Not really, because it’s too expensive for what it does and for what it contains.
In my opinion, Dasuquin is a really good supplement in terms of healing arthritis. It contains the right substances (I would have changed the doses personally, but things are okay like this too), it has lots of good reviews and it works for real. However, it’s extremely expensive for all these.
In fact, you can find cheaper supplements that do the same thing in terms of pain. So I wouldn’t really recommend this supplement, just because of its huge price. There were some other things I didn’t like about it, but they weren’t as major as this one.
So that’s how real things are when it comes to Dasuquin. I tried to show you both the positive and the negative side about it, because you can’t find them in most reviews. This supplement is not as perfect as it seems, even though it is effective.
But if its advantages are more important than its cons for you, I say you give it a try. At most you would be wasting some money.
