How we research.

How we research

A short, checkable account of where the words on this site come from.

For a product

1. Read the listing properly. Specifications, stated dimensions, weight bands, materials and care instructions - and the caveats manufacturers bury in the fourth bullet, which are often the most useful sentence on the page.
2. Check the maker's own site. Sizing charts, manuals, warranty terms and any published study. When a manufacturer runs its own research, that is worth reading and worth labelling.
3. Read owner feedback, and say plainly what that is. Two things: the aggregate star rating and rating count Amazon publishes, and a read of the reviews Amazon surfaces on the listing, looking for complaints that recur rather than for a quotable line. We do not read every review, we do not run a survey or a panel, and we do not follow owners over months - if you see a site claiming any of that, ask how. Amazon's aggregate is also not restricted to verified purchasers, so we treat it as a public retailer aggregate rather than as owner testimony. Where opinion genuinely divides - durability, firmness, sizing - we report the split instead of picking the flattering half.
4. Confirm the listing is live. A recommendation pointing at a dead or mismatched product is worse than no recommendation.
5. Write it for the stage. Every product on this site has to answer why it belongs on the page of the life stage it is filed under. If we cannot answer that, it comes off.

For a claim about dogs

We use veterinary schools, veterinary associations, peer-reviewed research and the published materials of national organisations. We prefer sources we can open and read in full, and we deep-link the page that supports the claim rather than the organisation's home page.

When a source is regional, we say so - a large UK dataset describes a pattern of risk accurately while its incidence numbers belong to that country. When a study has a limit, we carry the limit: a single-breed sample, a manufacturer sponsor, a small population.

And when we cannot verify something, it does not go in. The dog-care corner of the internet is unusually full of statistics that sound precise, get repeated everywhere, and trace back to nothing. We would rather publish a smaller number of things you can check.

What we do not do

• We do not test products, and we never write as though we had.
• We do not invent statistics, sources, model numbers or product listings.
• We do not use stock quotes from named experts we have not spoken to.
• We do not reproduce individual comments from forums or social media as though they were interviews. Where community consensus is useful, we describe the consensus and name where it comes from.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we want to fix it rather than defend it. Prices move, listings change and products are discontinued, so parts of this site go stale between updates by default.

How to report an error. Email hello@wagyears.com. Tell us the page URL, the sentence or figure you think is wrong, and - if you have it - the source that says otherwise. There is no form here and no list to join: we do not collect email addresses on this site for any purpose, and a correction does not sign you up to anything.

What happens next. A factual error, a dead or mismatched product link, or a price that no longer matches the listing gets fixed, and the page carries the date it was last updated so you can see that it moved. Where a correction changes the substance of a recommendation rather than a number, we say what changed in the page rather than editing it silently. If we cannot verify a claim either way, we remove it rather than soften it.