Editorial Policy

How We Test explains how we score a product. This page explains the standards that govern everything else: where facts come from, what we will not print, and what happens when we get it wrong.

Sourcing standards

Because our authority is transparency rather than credentials, citation discipline is not decoration here — it is the product.

1. Every factual claim that is not self-evident gets a source, and every source is linked in a visible Sources block on the page it appears on. If we tell you a bed’s chew warranty runs 120 days and replaces the cover but not the mattress, there is a link to the page where the manufacturer says exactly that.
2. Primary sources beat secondary ones. The Center for Pet Safety itself, not a blog aboutthe Center for Pet Safety. The manufacturer’s spec sheet, not a retailer’s listing copy.
3. Specifications come from the manufacturer.Where the manufacturer publishes nothing, we write “not published” — we do not estimate, and we do not quietly upgrade a vague claim into a precise one. A brand that says “1000D nylon” has not said “1000D Cordura,” and we will not write that it did.
4. Safety claims come from the certifying body.We call a product “crash certified” only if it appears on the Center for Pet Safety’s published list — never because its packaging says so.
5. We never cite a competitor as the source of a fact we present as our own analysis.

Veterinary and behavioural claims are cited, never asserted

This is the hardest line on the site and the one we are strictest about. Stephen V. is an experienced dog owner. He is not a veterinarian, a veterinary technician, a certified trainer or a behaviourist.

So where a page touches anything clinical — whether a bed’s destruction signals anxiety, what belongs in a first aid kit, what a medication does to a dog — the claim is a direct quote from a named authority, attributed and linked. It is never written in our voice.

Our dog first aid guide is the clearest example: essentially every clinical sentence on it is a quotation from the American Veterinary Medical Association, and it publishes no dose for any substance — because no authoritative body publishes one to owners, and a stranger on the internet inventing a dose for your dog is exactly how dogs get hurt.

What we refuse to publish

• Fabricated reviews, ratings, testimonials or review counts. We publish none, because we have no user-review data. Our durability score is our own editorial judgement and is labelled as one — never marked up as an aggregate rating.
• A “we tested” claim for gear we did not test. This is the exact dishonesty the site was built in response to, and committing it ourselves would forfeit the only thing that makes us worth reading.
• An invented specification. Including the tempting ones — stitching details, which no manufacturer in this category publishes and which reviewers invent constantly.
• A price we cannot verify.Prices come live from Amazon’s API with a 48-hour freshness gate. Stale data suppresses itself and the page falls back to “Check price on Amazon.” There is no code path on this site capable of printing a hand-written price.
• Clinical advice in our own voice. See above.
• A link to a page that does not exist. Internal links are checked automatically at build time; a link to an unwritten article fails the build.

Independence

Inclusion cannot be bought. No manufacturer has paid to appear on this site, none can, and none is given advance sight of a verdict.

We buy what we assess. We do not accept free samples. If that ever changes, this page and How We Test will say so before a single review reflects it.

Commission does not move a ranking. Several of our top picks earn us nothing at all — they are not sold on Amazon, our only earning partner. We recommend them anyway, because a recommendation we cannot monetise is still the right recommendation. The full disclosure is here.

We say the negative. Every product has a downside, and a roundup where everything is excellent is a roundup nobody should believe. If the best-selling product in a category is badly made, we say so.

Corrections

We will get things wrong. Specifications change, products get discontinued, warranties get quietly rewritten, and sooner or later we will misread one.

When that happens we correct it — and if the error was material, we note the correction visibly rather than editing the page and hoping nobody noticed.

If you find an error, email Info@houndandfield.com. Bring the source and we will check it against ours. Corrections are the most valuable message we get, and manufacturers are explicitly welcome to send them: if we have your spec wrong, we genuinely want to know.

Updating and freshness

Prices refresh automatically every day. Every commercial page is reviewed quarterly — products get discontinued, warranties change, new safety certifications get issued.

But we update the “last updated” date only when something has actually changed. A touched timestamp on unchanged content is a lie to the reader and to the crawler. It is a common trick and we will not use it.