Nordic Naturals Omega-3 Pet Review: Months of Daily Use on a 72 lb Arthritic Dog

The first morning I poured fish oil over Biscuit's kibble, Glen stood in the kitchen doorway and asked whether I was sure about the smell. That was January 2025. Biscuit was ten years old then, seventy-two pounds, a yellow Lab and golden retriever mix who had been diagnosed with arthritis in both hips the previous September, with stiffness in his left knee that showed on the X-rays and in the way he took the four wooden back steps one at a time. Nordic Naturals Omega-3 Pet was the second thing I added to his breakfast, months after the glucosamine, and it is the one I have now given him for twenty-two months straight. This is what that stretch of mornings actually looked like, including the part where I tell you plainly that I am not certain it helped his hips at all.

I am not a veterinarian and I am not going to write like one. I taught middle school band for thirty years and retired four years ago, and what I know about supplements comes from a practice log on the kitchen counter, one line a day about how Biscuit got up, how the stairs went, and how far we walked. I added five things to his breakfast between October 2024 and November 2025, one at a time, months apart, and none of them was ever stopped to test. That means I cannot prove which product did what. What I can do is tell you what I saw after this one, and what I did not.

How I've Used It

The bottle I buy is the 8 ounce one, 237 milliliters, unflavored liquid fish oil. It lives in the refrigerator door once it is opened, never in the cupboard, and that has been the rule since the first bottle. Every morning at seven I measure out the label's amount for his weight, pour it over his kibble, and set the bowl down. Nothing at dinner. If I am at a school concert or an early appointment, Glen does breakfast and does it the same way, because I wrote the amount on an index card and stuck it to the inside of the cabinet door. He has never once had to ask me. The first bottle, I will admit, I opened at the counter and sniffed it like a suspicious person, then measured the label's amount onto a saucer before it went anywhere near his bowl, just to see how much it actually was. It was less than I expected. Nordic Naturals packs it in the 8 ounce bottle, and that bottle lasts me a good while at one small measure a day. I have never once run out without noticing in time to order another, which is its own kind of review.

One thing worth knowing if your dog is a picky one: Biscuit eats nearly anything out of a bowl, so I am the wrong person to ask about palatability. The single exception in his life was the first week of the Cosequin tablet, when he took it from my hand, thought about it, and spat it onto the floor. Everything has gone on the kibble ever since. This oil is unflavored and he has never once turned his nose up at a bowl with it in, but he also has never turned his nose up at much. I would rather tell you that than let you think I have some special insight into a difficult eater.

What Twenty-Two Months of Mornings Actually Showed

Here is the honest headline, and I want it out of the way before anything else: I could not point to a joint change from this oil. In January and February of 2025 the line in my log about how he got up from the kitchen floor reads about the same as it did in December. The change in that stretch, the one where he stopped hesitating before he stood, had already come in November after about six weeks on the glucosamine. I have gone back through that log more than once looking for something I missed, and there is nothing in it that belongs to the fish oil.

What there is, is his coat. Around eight weeks in, sometime in March, I was brushing him on the back porch and noticed my hand came away clean. For a couple of years before that, brushing him in winter left fine flakes on the brush and on the floor around it, and along his back and at the base of his tail the fur had gone dry and rough. That stopped. It was a Saturday, the first warm one that spring, and I remember it because I had the porch door propped open and the brush came away clean twice in a row. I did it a third time just to be certain I was not imagining it. It came back softer than it had been in a long while, and it has stayed that way through two more winters. That is a real change. It is just not the change I was shopping for.

So what I will not tell you is that it made him steadier on the thirteen indoor stairs, or lengthened his walk, or got him jumping into the Subaru again. None of that happened, and some of it was never going to. What I will tell you is that his coat is better, that Dr. Amundsen recommended this specifically, and that I have kept buying it for twenty-two months on that basis. If you need a supplement to do something you can see in a week, this is the wrong thing to buy.

Reading the Label the Way Dr. Amundsen Read It

Before I bought it, I stood in the feed store out on the highway and read three salmon oil labels in a row, and I put all three back on the shelf. Not because they were bad. Because I could not tell from any of them what I would actually be getting, and Dr. Amundsen had already named this one, so there was no reason for me to guess.

Dr. Amundsen has been Biscuit's vet since he was a puppy, and she reads every label before anything goes in his bowl. What she pointed to here was the form of the oil: triglyceride molecular form, which the label describes as the form naturally found in fish. She also liked that it is non-GMO and gluten and dairy free, with no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. The label is equally plain that fish is an allergen, which matters if your dog has ever reacted to fish. It is listed as unflavored liquid, and that is what it is. None of that is exciting. It is the kind of label that tells you what it is and then stops talking.

The listed benefits are eye care, heart health and immune support, and the specific uses are coat, eyes and heart. I can speak to exactly one of those. I have no way to measure his heart or his eyes from the kitchen counter, and I am not going to repeat a claim as though I had. If you want the heart argument, ask your vet, because she can make it better than I can. The coat is the one I watched with my own hands, and the coat is the one I will stand behind.

The listing also puts the breed size at medium, and at seventy-two pounds Biscuit is on the large side of that. That is exactly why I asked Dr. Amundsen for the amount rather than guessing from the bottle or from something I read online. The label gives you a measure for a weight and the vet confirms it. I would not do it any other way, and I would not take dosing advice from a review, including this one.

The Fish Smell Is Not Biscuit's Problem

Glen would like me to mention the smell. Every morning, for about ten minutes after I pour it, the kitchen smells like a fish market. It does not bother me. It does not bother Biscuit, who has his head in the bowl before I have set it down properly. Glen has opinions. He has had opinions for twenty-two months, and he has not once refused to do breakfast when I was out, so I take that as a vote of confidence in the product. He has also, twice now, been the one to notice the bottle running low before I did, which is more attention than he gives most things in that kitchen.

Keeping it in the refrigerator door helps, both with the smell and with keeping it standing where I can find it. The bottle sits on the door shelf beside the mustard, which is not where I planned to put it, but that is where it fits upright and where my hand goes without thinking. One small habit worth passing along: wipe the rim of the bottle with a paper towel after you pour. Skip that and the shelf gets tacky after a couple of weeks, and then you are scrubbing the inside of your refrigerator and thinking unkind thoughts about a bottle of fish oil.

How It Sits Next to the Other Four

Because I added things one at a time and never stopped any of them, I cannot tell you what share of his good days belongs to this oil. The order was the Cosequin in October 2024, then this Nordic Naturals oil in January 2025, then the green lipped mussel chews in April, then the turmeric in July, then the hyaluronic acid last November. All five still go on breakfast at seven, and all five are still on the shelf today. That is a messy way to run an experiment and it is the honest way to run a dog's life, and I would rather tell you it is messy than pretend I sorted it out.

Where he is today, in November 2026: he gets up from the kitchen floor easier than he did in September 2024, he walks about twenty-five minutes most days, and he comes down the stairs steadily, though going up is still slow and always has been. Cold, wet days are still his worst. He is not cured and he is not young again, and no bottle on that shelf made him run. Glen still lifts his back end into the Subaru, and nothing we have bought changed that.

If I were starting over, I would still put a fish oil second, right after the glucosamine, and I would still choose this one, because Dr. Amundsen named it and because it is the easiest thing on the counter to add to a bowl. I have thought about dropping it once or twice, in the flat months when I could not see that it was doing anything at all, and I have not, because the coat is real and because my vet asked. That is the whole of my reasoning and I will not dress it up. It does not ask anything of you. It does not need to be hidden in a pill pocket or timed around a meal. You measure it, you pour it, you put the bottle back in the door, and you get on with the morning.

Eight weeks in, the flaky patches along his back were gone. Twenty-two months in, I still cannot tell you it did a thing for his hips.

Who This Is For

This is for the person whose dog has started to slow down, whose vet has already said the words fish oil out loud, and who wants to know what one bottle does over a real stretch of mornings rather than what the label promises. It suits a dog who eats from a bowl without an argument, because a liquid asks less of you than a chew or a tablet. And it suits an owner willing to keep some kind of note, even a line a day on the kitchen counter, because without one you will not be able to tell what changed from what you only hoped had changed.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your dog has ever had a reaction to fish, because fish is the allergen this bottle lists. Skip it if you are looking for something to fix a limp or to stand in for a conversation with your vet about pain, because this is not that and I will not pretend it is. Skip it if you want a chew you can toss across the kitchen, since a liquid means measuring every morning whether you feel like it or not. And skip it if ten minutes of fish smell in the kitchen every day would genuinely wear you down, because it will be there every day, and no amount of liking the product makes that go away.