# Methodology — How Every Number Gets a Source

> How The Pet Docket collects product specs, prices and owner complaints. Every value carries a source URL and a date. Unverified figures are left out.

Source page: /methodology/

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**Affiliate disclosure:** The Pet Docket earns a commission from some links on this site. That never changes what we publish or how we rank a product. [How we make money](/disclosure/)

[The Pet Docket](/) Menu

[Litter boxes](/best-self-cleaning-litter-box/)[Feeders](/best-automatic-cat-feeder/)[Finder](/litter-box-finder/)[Pet insurance](/pet-insurance/)[Methodology](/methodology/)

[About The Pet Docket, and what the site is becoming](/about/) The Pet Docket [How this site makes money, and what it does not change](/disclosure/)

# What is allowed on this site

A review site is only worth reading if you can check it. Here is the rule set we apply to every product.

[Read the rules](#rules)

[The data model](#model)[Use the dataset](/api/catalog.json)[Report a wrong number](/contact/)

![A silver tabby cat and a yellow labrador retriever in profile, rim lit against a near black background.](/photos/hero-2.jpg)![A white cat and a border collie in profile, rim lit against a near black background.](/photos/hero-3.jpg)![A ginger cat and a german shepherd in profile, rim lit against a near black background.](/photos/hero-4.jpg)![A black cat and a greyhound in profile, rim lit against a near black background.](/photos/hero-1.jpg)

Dataset v1.1.0 Read 28 Oct 2026

1.  ## Which page we read
    
    We start with the manufacturer page, not the review page
    
    Specifications come from the product page the brand controls, or from a retailer listing when the brand does not publish a spec sheet. We record the exact URL and the date we read it. That is the only way a number on this site can still be checked a year from now.
    
    Written down so you can hold us to it, and so you can reproduce our work.
    
2.  ## What we leave out
    
    A value we cannot source does not go on the page
    
    If a source does not publish a waste bin volume, we show a dash. We do not estimate it from a photograph, we do not average it across models, and we do not fill the gap with a number that reads plausibly. An empty field is more useful than a confident guess.
    
3.  ## Prices and their dates
    
    Prices are dated observations, never live quotes
    
    Retail prices move and sellers disagree. Every price on this site carries the source URL and the date we read it. Two retailers listed the same PetSafe model at $399.99 and $171.00 on the same day, and we publish the range rather than picking the flattering number.
    
4.  ## How complaints are counted
    
    Complaint records are quoted, not tallied by us
    
    We publish owner complaint patterns that appear in the cited sources. We do not scrape, score or aggregate reviews ourselves, and we do not convert them into a star number, because a star number implies a measurement we did not perform.
    
5.  ## Scores we do not give
    
    We publish no rating of our own yet
    
    Our bench is not running. When it is, first-party measurements will appear here, clearly marked as ours, dated, and published whether or not they flatter the products we earn from. Until then the honest thing to publish is the specification and the complaint record.
    
6.  ## How the score is worked out
    
    The setup-risk score is arithmetic, not instinct
    
    Five published facts each add one point: 2.4 GHz only, a one-year warranty, a waste bin under 8 litres, measured noise at 40 dB or above, and a warranty we could not confirm. Zero to one point is lower risk, two to three is moderate, four or more is higher. You can recompute it from the table. The score is written for hardware that runs itself, so it appears on litter boxes and feeders. Water fountains and indoor potties fail in different ways, and those records carry the running cost instead: how often the maker tells you to replace a filter or a pad roll.
    
7.  ## What commission changes
    
    Money never reaches the ranking
    
    Affiliate commission changes which products we can afford to link, not which products we list or how we order them. We do not accept payment for placement, we do not gate reviews behind a programme, and no product is badged as a pick because of what it pays.
    
8.  ## How we correct errors
    
    Corrections are published, not quietly patched
    
    When a source corrects itself or a specification changes, the page updates and the observation date moves with it. If we got something wrong, tell us and we will fix it and say so.
    

## What each record contains

The dataset is one JSON document with a stable schema.

Every product carries the same 34 to 37 fields, including the ones with a null value, so a consumer can tell "not published" apart from "zero".

The record also holds the animals the maker sells the product for, read from the page we cite. A feeder sold for cats and small dogs is listed for both. A litter box with a raised entry to keep dogs out is listed for cats only. That is a fact about the product, not about the reader: the same record serves both, and no page on this site changes its content because of where you are reading it from.

| Field group | Example fields | Rule |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Identity | id, cluster, species, brand, model, url | The **id** is stable and is the join key across the API, the MCP tools and the page URLs. **Species** lists the animals the maker sells the product for. |
| Family | cluster, servesNote, runningCost | **Cluster** is the product family: smart-litter-box, automatic-feeder, water-fountain or indoor-potty. **Running cost** is the published consumable cadence, shown instead of a risk score where the score does not apply. |
| Price | priceUsd, priceLowUsd, priceHighUsd, priceSource, priceObservedOn | Always a dated observation at a named source. Null when no dated price was found. |
| Specification | wasteBinL, interiorL, catWeightMinLb, entryHeightIn, noiseDb, wifiBands, warrantyMonths | Null means the source did not publish it. Never inferred. |
| Provenance | sourceUrl, sourceLabel, observedOn, priceVerification, noiseVerification | Per-field verification where a value can come from more than one kind of source. |
| Editorial | strengths, tradeoffs, documentedComplaints, recurringCostNote | Derived from cited sources. Each entry is a quotation or a direct restatement, not an opinion. |

## Use it yourself

The whole dataset is one request away.

It is described in an OpenAPI document so you can generate a client from it.

JSON

### [/api/catalog.json](/api/catalog.json)

The full dataset. Every record, every field, every source URL.

OpenAPI 3.1

### [/openapi.json](/openapi.json)

The machine-readable description of the endpoints, parameters and error states.

ARD

### [/.well-known/ai-catalog.json](/.well-known/ai-catalog.json)

The resources this site publishes, in the discovery format agents read.

## Corrections

**Something wrong here?** If a figure on this site is out of date, out of context or simply wrong, [tell us](/contact/). We will correct it and update the observation date on the page. Corrections are not quietly patched and they are not hidden.

## Check one figure against the rule

Take any product, pick one published number and check it against the source it came from. That is the whole method.

[Open the finder](/litter-box-finder/)

[The Pet Docket](/)

Every number we publish carries the source it came from and the date we read it. Where we could not verify a figure, we leave it out rather than estimate it.

#### Reviews

-   [Best self-cleaning litter boxes](/best-self-cleaning-litter-box/)
-   [Best automatic cat feeders](/best-automatic-cat-feeder/)
-   [Best automatic dog feeders](/best-automatic-dog-feeder/)
-   [Best dog water fountains](/best-dog-water-fountains/)
-   [Litter box finder](/litter-box-finder/)
-   [Feeder finder](/feeder-finder/)
-   [Dog gear finder](/dog-gear-finder/)
-   [Pet insurance comparison](/pet-insurance/)

#### About

-   [How we work](/methodology/)
-   [About The Pet Docket](/about/)
-   [Affiliate disclosure](/disclosure/)
-   [Contact](/contact/)

#### For tools

-   [llms.txt](/llms.txt)
-   [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt)
-   [Product dataset](/api/catalog.json)
-   [API catalog](/.well-known/api-catalog.json)
-   [auth.md](/auth.md)

© 2026 The Pet Docket. Dataset v1.1.0, observed 2026-10-28. [Privacy](/privacy/) · [Disclosure](/disclosure/) · [Methodology](/methodology/)

Photographs on this site were generated for The Pet Docket and show cats and rooms, not the products reviewed. Product photography is needed; until then every product is described from its published specification.