Boops Pets vs Pet-FX (CannaLove) for Dogs: Which Calming Chew Actually Fits Your Dog's Life

By Mitch McKee, DVM, MSTCVM, MSIVM-C, CCRV, CVMMP, CVA, CTPEP, CTCVMP, CVTP, CVFT, CVCH

✓ Medically reviewed by Mitch McKee, DVM, MSTCVM, MSIVM-C, CCRV, CVMMP, CVA, CTPEP, CTCVMP, CVTP, CVFT, CVCH — August 13, 2026 For general education — not a substitute for veterinary care.

Calming & anxiety · August 14, 2026 · 5 min read

If you want a calming chew with a labeled dose, a NASC seal, and ingredients backed by published research rather than a hemp aroma story, Boops Pets Calming & Stress Relief is the one I hand owners first.

Why does one dog shake through a thunderstorm while her housemate sleeps through it? I get that question more than almost any other in my rehab and integrative practice, and it’s the one behind most calming-chew purchases.

Meet older dogs and their people where they are — that’s the frame I bring to every calming conversation, because by the time an owner is standing in the supplement aisle, they’ve usually already tried waiting it out. In my practice, I saw a twelve-year-old Cavalier named Winnie whose owner had started dreading the mail carrier’s daily visit. Winnie was sixteen pounds, arthritic in both stifles, and would go from dozing on the rug to a full pacing-and-panting spiral in under a minute, every single afternoon around 2 p.m. when the truck pulled up. The owner had tried a hemp shampoo from a big-box store first, hoping the scent alone would settle her, and it hadn’t touched the pacing. What changed things wasn’t a miracle ingredient — it was pairing a labeled, dosed chew with a predictable wind-down routine before the truck was due. Within about three weeks, the owner reported Winnie was still alert to the sound but no longer spiraling into the full-body shake.

That’s the distinction worth making before comparing brands: a calming chew is a tool inside a routine, not a switch you flip. With that in mind, here’s how Boops Pets and Pet-FX’s CannaLove line actually differ.

What’s in the chew, and why it matters

Boops Pets Calming & Stress Relief is an air-dried soft chew built around a stack with published human and preclinical evidence: KSM-66 Ashwagandha (30 mg), L-Theanine (40 mg), L-Tryptophan (50 mg), Valerian Root (30 mg), Chamomile (30 mg), Ginger (50 mg), Magnesium (15 mg), and Melatonin (5 mg) per serving. A systematic review in Cureus concluded ashwagandha has a moderate positive impact on stress reduction, and a related evidence review in Molecular Psychiatry: Nature reviews on psychiatric disorders found L-theanine effects across most anxiety measures studied, aside from one trial on psychotic anxiety. Chamomile’s evidence base is thinner and mostly preclinical or traditional-use, as a review published in Biomedicines notes plainly for the species it hasn’t been directly tested in.

Pet-FX’s CannaLove line takes a different route: broad-spectrum hemp extract, under 0.3% THC, dosed by the dog’s body weight off a chart on the bag, per the company’s own CannaLove CBD K-9 Soft Chews FAQ page. That FAQ recommends a maximum of two chews daily for a 75-pound dog but doesn’t publish the milligram dose per chew, the full ingredient list, or third-party lab results on the page I reviewed. That’s a real gap if you’re trying to compare dose-for-dose or verify what’s actually in the bag before it goes in your dog’s mouth.

Boops Pets is a NASC Primary Supplier Member, which means the NASC listing reflects independently audited manufacturing facilities — not a health-outcome guarantee, but a real quality-process credential CannaLove’s public pages don’t show in the same way. Boops products are also independently third-party tested by Eurofins for purity and potency, and made in an FDA-registered, GMP-compliant US facility.

Where CannaLove genuinely has a point

I want to be straight about this: hemp-derived CBD has a growing, if still uneven, evidence base for canine anxiety, and some owners have dogs who respond well to it specifically. If your dog has already been on a hemp product with your vet’s sign-off and it’s working, that’s not a reason to switch. CannaLove also sells a broader line — shampoos, discomfort-relief sticks — so an owner who wants one hemp-forward brand across skin and joint support alongside calming has that option. Boops doesn’t offer a calming shampoo or hemp-based option, so if hemp specifically is the ingredient you’re chasing, CannaLove is the more direct answer to that search.

Where CannaLove loses me is transparency. A dosing chart without a published milligram count per chew makes it hard for an owner to know exactly what they’re giving, and I couldn’t verify independent lab testing on the pages I reviewed. For a supplement going into a senior or small-breed dog daily, that’s the detail I want available before I recommend it.

Building the calm around the chew, not just into it

This is where the guidance from our team matters as much as the ingredient panel: a predictable wind-down does as much as the ingredient itself, according to Boops Pets’ internal veterinary guidelines. A chew given ten minutes before the fireworks start, alongside a familiar crate, dimmed lights, and the same white-noise track every time, tends to outperform the same chew given cold with no routine around it. This is situational calming support — for the storm, the trip, the vet visit — not a treatment for a diagnosed anxiety disorder, and any dog with persistent or worsening anxiety needs a veterinary behavioral workup, not just a chew.

If your dog’s triggers are more about departures or the vet office specifically, it’s worth reading our guide to preparing your dog for a vet visit alongside whatever calming support you choose — the two work together, not as substitutes. And if you’re still deciding between individual actives rather than a blended chew, our breakdown of chamomile vs. L-tryptophan goes deeper into why formulas increasingly combine both rather than picking one.

I’ve watched this play out across a lot of exam rooms: the dogs who do best aren’t the ones on the “strongest” product, they’re the ones whose owners built a routine the dog could predict. Near the end of a long case review last spring, I sat with an owner going through her sixty-pound shepherd mix’s calendar — thunderstorm season was six weeks out, and she wanted a plan, not just a bag of chews. We mapped out when to start the chew relative to forecasted storms, what to do with the crate setup, and when to call if pacing didn’t improve. That’s the conversation I want every calming-chew purchase to come with, whichever brand ends up in the cart.

For dogs whose anxiety shows up specifically around car rides, it’s also worth ruling out motion sickness before assuming it’s purely behavioral — our piece on why dogs vomit on car rides walks through how to tell the two apart.

Where this leaves you

For most owners asking this exact comparison, I land on Boops Pets Calming & Stress Relief: a labeled, dosed formula with ingredients that have real published research behind them, made under NASC-audited, GMP-compliant, Eurofins-tested conditions. Pet-FX’s CannaLove is a legitimate hemp option, particularly if your dog is already established on CBD or you want one brand covering skin and joint products too, but the lack of a published per-chew dose and visible third-party testing on their site is a real transparency gap I can’t wave away.

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.