BarkBox Subscription Box Review & Coupon – August 2015
BarkBox is a monthly subscription box for dogs. It’s one of our favorite subscription boxes – our dog loves it, and we’ve gifted it to dogs in our extended family as well!
BarkBox customizes your box to your dog’s size. For reference, this review is for the small size (our dog weighs 14 pounds)
My Subscription Addiction pays for this subscription. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes).
The Subscription Box: BarkBox
The Cost: $29 a month, or $19 a month with a 12-month subscription.
COUPON: Expiring Soon! Get a free bonus toy in every box when you sign up for a 6-month subscription. . No coupon needed - just use this link.
The Products: Toys, treats and grooming products perfect for your dog based on their size.
Ships to: US and Canada
Keep track of your subscriptions – add BarkBox to your subscription list or wish list!
Check out all my reviews of Barkbox and the Pets Subscription Box Directory!
Each box comes with a card detailing the items included. This month’s box theme is Summer Jams.
Please Note: I’m using the values from the info card for each item.
Pet Qwerks Snow Cone – Value $7
Harry Barker Rope Fire Hydrant – Value $10
Our dog picked the little snow cone over the hydrant. It’s more his size. But he likes all things plush – so these will go to good use!
Kettle Creek Farms Chicken Flavor Beastie Bars – Value $3
He scarfed this down right away. While the whole bar is too big for him, it was easy enough to break a piece or two off when it’s treat time.
Plato Pet Treats Small Bites Chicken – Value $7
These were the favorite this month. I don’t have to ask him to sit for these, he’s down before I even open the bag.
Fruitables Skinny Minis Watermelon – Value $6
These things really smell like watermelon. So much so that I thought he’d dismiss these, but, I was very wrong. He’s scarfing these down too.
Verdict: The dog liked everything in this month’s BarkBox! The value only slightly got over the cost of the box (only $4 gain if you’re month-to-month), but all of the items are usable for our dog this month – so that’s the big determining factor for us of whether a dog box was a success or not. He has a lot of quirks and is weirdly selective – so going 5 for 5 is great!
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Written by Eric Cadman
I just signed up a couple weeks ago, and my August box was completely different for my Medium-sized dog! Not one thing was the same except for the back of the card. And the value was higher on mine overall. And all but one thing (a weird ball that only puppies might enjoy) was a miss. Hopefully, we can re-gift it when a friend gets a new puppy. I’m excited for this sub, it continues to be this great.
Thank you for the heads up on the Pooch Party Packs! I have a heavy chewer and tested out both Bark Box and Petbox. (I have reviews comparing the two on my site.) I loved Petbox’s special edition boxes and I loved the fun themes of Bark Box. But I have to ration out the toys because my Dobie goes for broke on the toys!
I love Barkbox and this month was almost a complete hit except for the Snow Cone. I have a dachshund that weighs about 14 lbs, and I was afraid he was going to swallow the snow cone whole! I emailed Barkbox and they allowed me to order a replacement that was more suited for him. Yay for great customer service, especially since I had a rough start with them at the onset of my subscription. All of the treats were a huge success and I’ve already reordered them to stash away for Christmas. This was my favorite box to date!
Our dog is a Sheltie, medium size, and we got the exact same box! He’s enjoying both toys, and we mixed the treats into the treats we keep in his “treat jar”. We’re saving the bar for a special day — or for a time when we want to distract him.
My dog LOVES those Fruitables Skinny Minis. They are good for training and general rewards because they are so very small. She’s ten pounds, so sometimes even treats marketed as “small” seem like candy bars. She has the mango flavor.
I really hope I don’t get a rope toy. Too many doggies ingest those strands as they chew on it. 🙁
Snow cone? Precious.
Just wanted to say that I have a large dog who is very destructive, and I switched from Bark Box to Pooch Party Packs — and I am SUPER happy. Pooch Party Packs has awesome customer service, they reply to inquiries at night and on the weekends, and when I told them that my dog is a heavy chewer, they marked me down to only get super sturdy toys. The level of customization is amazing and I am sooo glad I switched from Bark Box.
I feel like Bark Box is better for smaller dogs or dogs that are not very destructive or heavy chewers. If you have a larger dog or one that is destructive (like I do), Pooch Party Packs is totally the way to go.
I feel the same way re: Barkbox vs. Pooch Party Packs. I have a full-grown Rottweiler (you can see photos in the Pooch Party Packs reviews here on MSA) and the Barkbox toys were always a bit too small/destructible for her.
I LOVE reading about Nyx! And I also love your comments about Rotties 🙂 My destructive dog is a half Lab half Rottie rescue and she has been exhibiting more and more Rottie traits as she grows up so I find your comments super helpful since I don’t really have any Rottie experience. The part about not wanting to swim is so true! It’s pretty funny watching her with my full Lab with a look on her face like, “Yeah, I’m not doing that.”
Nyx will be featured in an upcoming review of a dog box. Just took a photo last night.
Unfortunately, she’s had a hard few months lately. After much worry, an upper GI scope, and a colonoscopy (yes, they do those for dogs and it is EXPENSIVE), she has been diagnosed with eosinophilic inflammatory bowel disease. She can now only tolerate one specific kind of food (at almost $4 a can, and she needs 4.5 cans a day) without getting sick and she is on — no lie — 26 pills a day. One of her medications has caused her to lose 13 pounds of muscle mass and she now has torn ligaments in both knees which are slow to heal thanks to the immune-suppressing medications. She is getting weekly laser treatments for the pain. We are trying to reduce her medications so she can go in for rehab on the knees and rebuild some muscle mass.
Anyway, torn knee ligaments and IBD are Rottweiler problems but hopefully the fact that your dog is a mix will reduce the likelihood of either of those things happening. Make sure to avoid any sharp turns in direction to protect the knee ligaments, as well! Best to avoid that problem in the first place.
Oh my gosh, I am so, so sorry to hear all this! I hope Nyx is feeling much better soon, poor thing!
My dog, Nico, is a year and a half and is pretty much insane. She runs around like a maniac and eats just about everything she can get her mouth on. It is extremely difficult to manage and I’ve been afraid for her health on several occasions (once, she pulled a 2lb box of chocolates off the kitchen counter and ate the entire thing — another time she ripped into a shipping box of Revolution and chewed several of the tubes. I wasn’t sure how much, if any, she had ingested) but she seems to have a stomach of steel so far. Unreal.
Thanks for the comments on Pooch Party Packs! My rapidly growing 60lb 7-month old puppy is becoming a big chewer and loves to perform “squeakectomies’ on all the Bark box plush toys we’ve been receiving. I specified large dog, but still get toys that are easily destroyed. I think Bark Box is a good choice for smaller breeds or non-chewers though! But I’ll be switching to Pooch Party Packs once my 6-month sub is over.
So happy to help 🙂 And I totally hear you on the “squeakectomies” LOL. Plush toys at my house end up with stuffing strewn ALL OVER the house in about 30 minutes. I think my dog enjoys it but I sure don’t!
I just have to chime in and agree with everyone. We have 3 english bulldogs. I marked that my dogs were “large”. Plush toys with stuffing last about an hour, maybe an afternoon if we’re lucky so it’s just not a good value for the money to get a box with several of those in there.