Manifesto
We believe trust is the only asset that compounds. Everything below is how we try to earn it, keep it, and — when we get it wrong — repair it.
What We Believe
1. A good dog park is not the biggest or busiest one. It's the one where your dog feels safe.
Every review we publish is filtered through that question first. Not "is this a nice park" but "will your dog actually be OK here." Sometimes the answer is no. When it is, we say so, even if the park is famous.
2. "Pet-friendly" is a marketing term until someone verifies it. So we verify it.
We call hotels before we recommend them. We visit parks twice before we score them. We test gear until it fails. If a claim can be checked, we check it. If it can't be checked, we say so.
3. A failure log is more useful than a top 10 list.
Products fail. Some fail after passing earlier tests. Some fail because of cost-cutting on one specific part. Publishing those failures — with the brand, the failure mode, and the moment it broke — is more useful to readers than another roundup.
4. Real experience beats marketing language.
We write in first person because the experience is first person. When Jake describes the moment a fence gave way, he's describing something that happened. When Elena says a water bottle leaked, she means it leaked on her car seat.
5. Honesty costs money, and that's fine.
We've turned down affiliate commissions by telling readers not to buy things. We've retracted recommendations. We've written articles designed to reduce purchases in a category. All of these cost us money. All of them were the right call.
What We Refuse To Do
We don't accept payment for park placements.
No tourism board pays us to include their park. No city subsidizes a state guide. If a park is on this site, it's because we visited it.
We don't recommend products we haven't tested or verified.
There are products we recommend without having broken them ourselves — but they're products we or our team have used in the field for months, and we say so in the article. Everything else has to pass the protocol.
We don't quietly delete old recommendations.
When we change our mind about a product, we update the article with a changelog at the top and explain what we got wrong. If the failure is serious enough, we remove the recommendation but keep the reasoning visible.
We don't use paid stock photos.
The photos on this site are ours — taken by us, of our own dogs, at the parks we're reviewing. If we don't have a photo, we don't fake one.
We don't chase search volume at the cost of honesty.
There are high-volume keywords in this niche that would be profitable to write about, but we can't write about them honestly because we don't have the experience. Those articles don't get published on this site.
How We Make Money
We're going to be specific, because most sites aren't.
Affiliate links
When you click a product link and buy something, we may earn a commission. This is the primary way this site stays free. We use Amazon Associates and DHgate affiliate programs. Commissions do not affect our reviews, because our reviews are based on testing, not on which products pay the most. In several cases we've recommended cheaper products over more expensive ones that paid us higher commissions.
Every affiliate link on this site is marked with rel="nofollow sponsored", and the disclosure appears at the top and bottom of every article containing affiliate links.
Display advertising
At some point in the future, we may join an ad network (Mediavine or AdThrive). If we do, ads will be clearly marked and we won't allow any advertiser to influence editorial content. As of the current version of this site, we have no display advertising.
Direct partnerships
We occasionally partner directly with a service (like a dog-walking platform) for a referral fee. When we do, it's disclosed, and only for services we've actually used. This is rare — we'd rather recommend based on testing than based on deals.
What "Trust" Actually Means Here
Trust is not a feeling. It's a track record. Here's the track record we try to build:
- We publish our scoring methodology in full — see here.
- We disclose every affiliate relationship.
- We correct errors publicly, with a note in the article.
- We publish a failure log of products that didn't survive testing.
- We never recommend something we haven't tested or verified.
- We say "we don't know" when we don't.
- We tell you when a park is wrong for your dog, even if it's a famous one.
If you catch us failing any of the above, please tell us. hello@usadogparks.com. We mean it.
Why We Do This
Because we've all had a bad experience at a dog park. Because we've all bought gear that broke. Because we've all driven two hours to a "pet-friendly" hotel that wasn't. If this site saves a reader from even one of those experiences, it's doing its job.
If it saves you from five, we're doing it well.
— The USA Dog Parks team