Sometimes I like to walk the aisles of the local pet store with my bulldog, Jes. This is more often than not a trip to keep Jes socialized than it is to buy things. I might pick up a bag of food or her favorite treat (Dentley’s Meaty Center Cut Femur Bone or Front Porch Sweet Potato Dog Chews).
But when I’m looking for unique items or common items at the lowest price, I generally turn to online pet stores for things to buy for a dog. These are my favorite pet-related websites (in no particular order):
Pet Food Direct
As its name implies, Pet Food Direct is best known for its deals on dog food. They have a great selection of brands and offer terrific pricing; especially as compared with PetCo and PetSmart. But the thing I love most about this site is you can set up an auto-delivery of your dog food based on your dog’s consumption. If you’ve ever run out of dog food and had to feed your dog “people food” or make a special trip to the pet store, you’ll love this auto-ship service. And when you enroll in the auto-ship, you earn even deeper discounts on your dog food.
Dog.com
Dog.com offers the best price guarantee I’ve found online. If you find the exact item at a lower price on another retail site, Dogs.com will refund 120% of the difference between their price and the lower one. Of course there are rules around this, so be sure you know the parameters.
In addition to great prices, Dog.com has a wide variety of products to choose from. In fact, you can even buy pet insurance on the site!
In The Company Of Dogs
This is a great site to buy gifts for your dog or for a dog-lover. They have an entire section devoted to personalized products, including a throw pillow with your dog’s picture and name on it. They also have items that I haven’t seen on any other site; everything from tick keys to remove ticks (I didn’t even know such a thing existed before I saw it on this site) to a paw plunger (cleans dirty paws) to a doggy swim float and a chaise lounge with a canopy to block the sun. If you live in a cold climate rather than a warm, maybe you’re more interested in the fleece leg warmers and hoodie. And should you be planning to include your dog in a wedding ceremony, you can get a dog bow tie at In The Company of Dogs. It may seem like I’m poking fun at this site, but I really do love it for its extreme items as well as more common things to buy for a dog.
Animal Den 
This site wins paws-down when looking for a breed-specific gift. Want a wine stopper with an Akita atop it? Animal Den has it. A pair of socks with bulldogs on them? Animal Den has that too. A Shih Tzu Windchime? Yep, Animal Den has that too. Whether it’s jewelry, nick nacks, t shirts or quirky gifts, Animal Den is my go-to site for breed-specific gifts.
Amazon
Perhaps not what you generally think of when you think “pet store” but Amazon has a lot of pet products; from books to basic products like poo bags and collars to clothing and accessories and crates and dog strollers. I don’t think there’s anything available on Amazon that isn’t available on one of the other four sites, but I think to not include Amazon is to suggest they don’t have dog supplies — and that’s simply not true.
So whether you’re looking for things to buy for a dog or for a dog-lover, you’re sure to find what you want or need at one of my top 5 online pet stores. Do you shop online? If so, what’s your favorite online pet store? And why?
Disclosure: The list of stores is based on my personal experience and I was not compensated in any way by writing about them. If you choose to purchase items at SOME of these sites I may (or may not) earn a commission on what you purchase.
