Methodology
Why we refuse to publish a single average review score
Almost every review platform reports one number. For breeding, that number is structurally misleading — and here is the arithmetic that shows why.
Nearly every review platform reports a single average. For animal breeding, that convention actively hides the thing buyers most need to know, and it does so for a reason that is arithmetic rather than editorial.
Reviews of a breeder arrive in two very different populations. The first is written during or shortly after the purchase, when the buyer has met a friendly person, seen some paperwork and brought home a healthy-looking animal. The second is written much later, once the animal's actual health is known and once it is clear whether the breeder answers the phone when something goes wrong.
The first population is far larger than the second. Everybody has an opinion about an enquiry process; only a minority are still writing two years later. So a flat average is dominated by pre-sale impressions almost regardless of what the post-sale reality looks like. A breeder can be immaculate before the sale and unreachable after it, and still post a reassuring headline number — because the reassuring reviews simply outnumber the damning ones.
That is why the satisfaction score here is the mean of two separately-computed scores rather than a mean of all reviews. Each phase contributes equally to the headline no matter how lopsided the review counts are. It is a deliberate distortion of the raw average, chosen because the raw average distorts something worse.
There is a second problem an average cannot solve, and it is the reason every score on this site is published with an evidence level rather than alone. A 4.7 built on two reviews and a 4.7 built on thirty are not the same claim, and a 4.7 with no post-sale reviews at all is barely a claim about the breeder — it is a claim about their sales process. Where there is no post-sale record, the evidence level is capped at "thin" no matter how high the number, and the profile says so in plain words.
None of this makes a score a verdict. It makes it a starting point that does not mislead you about which half of the story it came from.
Breed health information on this site is general and educational, not veterinary advice about an individual animal. Contract guidance is general and not legal advice.