🐾 About Us
What Pet Should I Get? helps kids and families find a pet that truly fits their home — and then care for it the right way. Our whole approach rests on one idea: the happiest pets go to families who chose them thoughtfully. 🐾
🐾 Our story
This site was built by Emilia, an animal-obsessed 9-year-old, with the help of her mom and dad.
It started at home. Our dog Samantha, a brindle mixed breed who comes running at the word "carrot," has been part of the family for years. Emilia loves her, and before long she was asking the question this site is named after: what pet should we get? She didn't want the cutest answer. She wanted the right one, so she researched which small pet would really fit our family. The answer was a hamster, and that's how Caramel came home.
The research didn't stop there. Emilia kept saying other kids should have an easy way to figure out which pet actually fits their life. So her questions became this site: a quiz, a pet finder, and care guides that tell families the truth about each animal, hard parts included.
🧒 What Emilia does
Emilia is our creative director, and her decisions are real ones:
- She picks the animals. Which pets the site covers is her call, including the unusual ones like the millipede.
- She shapes the quiz. She throws out questions kids can't answer, and she tests the results to make sure the matches feel right.
- She helps invent the games. The Pet Arcade games are her ideas and her play-testing.
- She made a workbook. Emilia's "My First Pet" workbook is her own project, for kids getting ready for a first pet.
✍️ Who writes these guides
Emilia's mom and dad research and write our care guides, and they appear in our bylines as the WhatPetShouldIGet Expert Team. They study each species using reputable veterinary and animal-welfare sources. Every guide is reviewed against veterinary and animal-welfare sources, and our care information has been reviewed by a veterinarian. Dad builds the site. Mom is a teacher, so she also reviews the pages written for kids and classrooms (more on that below). We cover the challenges as honestly as the fun parts, and we always encourage families to adopt from a local shelter or rescue first.
👩🏫 Who reviews our classroom guides
Our classroom pages and our kid-suitability guides are reviewed by Stacey Fernandez, M.A. — a gifted education teacher who has taught K-8 for more than a decade across New Mexico, Virginia, and Georgia. She reads them the way a teacher reads a lesson plan: for whether the advice would survive a real classroom, a real school schedule, and a real group of children. Her review is about classroom practicality, not veterinary care — that is still checked against the sources listed on every page. Her school and school district are not affiliated with this site. More about Stacey and exactly what she reviews.
🔄 How we keep guides accurate
We update pages as care recommendations change, show a "last updated" date on every guide, and welcome corrections — if you spot something that looks off, let us know and we'll fix it. For the full detail — how the quiz scores your match, how we work out costs, which sources we use and what we do when they disagree — see how we work.
No relation to the Dr. Seuss book of the same name — this site is an independent, free tool made to help kids and families actually answer the question.
We're a friendly guide, not a substitute for professional advice. Always talk to a veterinarian, shelter, or experienced breeder before bringing home a pet — and have fun finding your new best friend!