PetPalHQ

Editor

Nicholas Miles

Editor & founder, PetPalHQ. Editor-in-Chief, SmartHomeExplorer.

NM

Synthesis editor across two affiliate publications. I treat editorial discipline as the moat — citing sources by name, dating every product check, and naming what I don't know. I think it's the most honest way to write about pet gear.

I'm Nick. I edit PetPalHQ and the sister site SmartHomeExplorer. Both sites run on the same editorial principle: synthesis of documented expert consensus is more useful — and more honest — than one writer's anecdotes about products they happen to own.

On PetPalHQ specifically, that means I read across the Merck Veterinary Manual, the American Animal Hospital Association, the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Association of Feline Practitioners, the Cornell Feline Health Center, the Tufts Cummings Petfoodology program, the LafeberVet avian library, regulatory bodies including the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine and the Center for Pet Safety, peer-reviewed studies on behavior and training, and the hobbyist communities where real-world failure modes show up first.

What I do

I synthesize sources. For every guide, that means pulling veterinary guidance for the safety and welfare claims, regulatory documents for compliance and food-safety standards, manufacturer documentation for spec accuracy, peer-reviewed studies where the literature exists, and hobbyist-community signals for the failure modes spec sheets don't advertise. I assemble those signals into the PetPal Gear Score — a transparent weighted composite, documented in detail on the methodology page.

I date-stamp every product check. Every guide on this site shows its updatedDate and lastProductCheck in the SourcesPanel at the bottom of the page; the methodology page renders a live table of the most recent refreshes across the site. If a guide is stale, the timestamp will say so.

What I don't claim

  • I don't run a testing lab.
  • I haven't personally owned every product on this site, and I won't pretend I have.
  • When I quote a brand, I link to the brand's own documentation so readers can verify the spec.
  • When I cite a peer-reviewed study, I name the authors and the year — Salonen 2020, Vieira de Castro 2020, Frank 2010 — so the citation is locatable.
  • When I cite a hobbyist-community signal, I label it as such. Reddit threads are signal, not authority.
  • The PetPal Gear Score is a composite of expert opinion. It is not a laboratory measurement and I don't describe it as one.

My beat

PetPalHQ organizes around five hubs and dozens of spoke guides beneath each:

Sister site: SmartHomeExplorer

I'm also editor-in-chief of SmartHomeExplorer, an established publication covering smart-home gear with the same editorial discipline that drives PetPalHQ. The SmartHomeExplorer methodology page describes the same approach in a different vertical: synthesis of expert consensus, named sources, dated refresh signals, and a transparent score formula. If you've read SmartHomeExplorer before, the editorial voice on PetPalHQ will feel familiar because it's the same one.

Get in touch

Corrections, source suggestions, story ideas, or fact-check requests — write me at editor@petpalhq.com. I read every reply. If a source on this site is out of date or a product spec has changed, the fastest way to get it fixed is a short email pointing me at the new document — I'll update the guide and credit you in the SourcesPanel if you'd like attribution.