I read about the minoxidil thing after my golden started sleeping on my side of the bed. Called the vet, she told me to stop using it entirely. So I stopped. Two weeks later the shedding was back and I was staring at the drain again, which is when it hit me that I had two problems and no answer to either. This was the first thing I found that dealt with both. The hair is going fine. Mostly I stopped thinking about it every night, which is what I actually paid for.

Vet visit in November. She had been sleeping on my pillow. Nobody could say for certain it was the minoxidil but the timing was ugly and the vet did not rule it out. Three hundred dollars and a very long night later I threw the bottle out. Switched to this in December. Four months in the crown is denser than it was and I have not had that conversation again.

The puppy goes through the bathroom bin like it is a job. One morning I found the cotton pads on the landing and had no idea how much he had swallowed. Emergency vet, overnight monitoring, four hundred and eighty dollars, and a lot of standing around waiting to be told he was fine. He was fine. I still stopped that week. Six months on this now and nothing I use lives anywhere he can reach it.

I compared this against buying the actives separately and a stamp off a marketplace, and on paper that is a fraction of the price. What stopped me was that I would still be putting something wet on my head every night with a labrador who sleeps on the bed. That was the whole reason I was looking. Three months in there is real texture at the crown that was not there in January. Four stars because the price still annoys me.

Switched over because of the dog, and half expected to trade my results for it. Nothing happened for the first month and I nearly wrote it off. What changed around week six was the shower drain, there was simply less in it. That was the signal for me. Month five now and the hairline is holding where it was, which is all I wanted.

Twice a day was never going to survive my schedule and it did not. I lasted about five weeks on the foam before it started living in a drawer, and the guilt of the two cats on the duvet did not help. Sunday night, two minutes, done. Seven months and I have not skipped a session, which for me is a personal record.

I wanted off anything I had to swallow, and I have two cats who sleep wherever they like. Between those two things almost everything on the market was out. Six months on this and the loss has slowed to the point where I have stopped checking. Nothing on the pillow, nothing in the cabinet they can reach.

I am not losing much yet, which is exactly why I started. The temples have crept back maybe a centimetre since I was twenty-eight and I would like that to be the end of it. We got a dog in January and I decided if I was going to do this for the next twenty years I should start with the version I do not have to think about around her. Nothing dramatic at four months and I would be suspicious if there was.

I am on a plane most weeks. Liquid in a carry-on is a bad idea and the daily schedule fell apart on every trip. On top of that my sister keeps the dog while I am away and I was not about to hand her a bottle with a warning attached. Sunday at home, then forget about it until the next Sunday. Five months, no gaps.

Month three and I can see it in the photos but not really in the mirror yet. The site said ninety days before anything worth photographing, so nobody misled me. The reason I moved over was the dog on the bed, so honestly anything that held my ground was going to be enough. My wife says the front looks fuller. I will update at six months.