I Was Doing Everything Right. Almost.
I like to think I'm a pretty conscious person. I thrift most of my clothes. I recycle. I volunteer. I donate to animal welfare organizations. I eat a mostly plant-based diet. I care — genuinely and deeply about the world I'm leaving behind for my kids, and yours.
And for years, I was still buying products tested on animals. Not because I didn't care. Because I was exhausted. I'm a busy mom, and the research required to figure it all out was just too much.
Then I watched the Ridglan Beagles video.
If you've seen it, you know. If you haven't — it documents the rescue of beagles from a commercial breeding facility where they were raised exclusively for laboratory testing. They were born into cages, never knowing anything else.
I watched it with Daisy in my lap.
Daisy is our rescue beagle. She was found abandoned in South Carolina in 2019 — left behind, we think, because she didn't hunt. A rescue organization found her, got her healthy enough to travel, and brought her to the DC area looking for her forever home. When I sat down to meet her, she climbed into my lap and stayed there. She came home with us that day. I mean, how could I resist?
She had a severe hookworm infection that took eighteen months to resolve. Watching her fight her way back to health, with a good attitude, changed something in me. But it was watching that video — with her sweet, adorable face looking up at me — that finally made me ask the question I couldn't un-ask:
Are you supporting this, and you don't even know it?
The answer was yes. And deep down, I knew it would be.
Around the same time, I started reading Lab Dog by Melanie D.G. Kaplan. If the Ridglan video cracked something open in me, this book blew the door off its hinges. Kaplan traces the life of a laboratory beagle with unflinching honesty — and reading it while Daisy slept at my feet made every page feel deeply personal. If you want to understand why this matters, start there. (Be prepared to get VERY angry in Chapter One.)
I want to be clear, I'm not building The Good Switch to capitalize on that tragedy. What it was — for me — was a wake-up call I couldn't ignore. The moment I stopped waiting for someone else to fix this and asked: Why not me?
Because I kept waiting. I kept looking for someone to build the thing that would make cruelty-free shopping genuinely easy for normal, busy people. And nobody did.
So here's what I know to be true: most people are not indifferent. Most people are overwhelmed. Millions of us recycle and donate and try — who would make better choices if better choices weren't so hard to make.
Do you know what it takes to verify whether a product is cruelty-free? You look up the brand. Then the parent company. Then cross-reference a certification database. All while standing in the shampoo aisle with three other things on your mind.
The Good Switch removes that friction.
Since I want to walk the talk, I decided to start where every honest journey has to start — with myself.
I'm doing a full self-audit of every product in my home. I’m going to show you honestly every shampoo, every cleaning spray, and every tube of mascara. I'm going to find out exactly where I stand — what I've been getting right, what I've been getting wrong, and what I'm switching first. I'll be sharing every step of that audit right here, with full transparency and zero judgment — because if I've been making mistakes while caring this much, I guarantee you have too. And that's okay. That's exactly why we're here.
You tell us what you use. We find you the best cruelty-free alternatives — verified, affordable, and actually available in your regular store.
That's it. That's the whole thing.
Because better choices should be easy ones.
Tested by me. Trusted by you.
— Rebecca & Daisy
Currently reading: Lab Dog by Melanie D.G. Kaplan — essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why this matters.
Up next on The Good Switch: My home self-audit — the good, the bad and the products I'm embarrassed to admit I've been buying for years.