How we verify

We call the source, we date every fact, and we publish corrections. That's the whole method. It is unglamorous and it is the entire reason this site exists.

Why this page exists at all

Most guides to the Delaware beaches copy their dog rules from each other. That works until a town changes a rule — and then the error propagates across a dozen sites and sits there for years, because nobody re-checked and nobody had a source to re-check against.

That is not hypothetical. Rehoboth Beach moved its seasonal dog dates in January 2026. A large share of the pages you'll find still publish the old ones. Being right about that is not a content-marketing flourish; it is the difference between a wasted three-hour drive and a good weekend.

The rules

1. The source is the body that sets the rule

A town's dog rules come from the town — by phone, or from the town's own published notice. A state park rule comes from the park. A pet fee comes from the property, not from a booking site's summary of the property. We do not source a fact from another guide, ever, including when that guide is probably right.

2. Every fact carries the date it was checked

Not the date the page went up, and not the date we last touched the file — the date we last confirmed the fact with its source. That's what the mono stamp at the bottom of each page is. It tells you how much to trust the page, which is information you can't get from a page that doesn't have one.

3. Every page tells you which kind of fact it is

There are two honest answers to "how do you know that", and they are not the same, so we label them separately rather than blurring them into one word.

Confirmed

We called, visited, or asked the body that sets the rule. The page carries a stamp with the date and the name of whoever told us.

Read from the source

Taken from a named primary source — the city's own notice, DNREC's published fee schedule, the county's own park listing — but not yet confirmed by phone. The page says so, names the source, and gives you the number to check it yourself.

Both get published. The difference is stated on the page, because "the city publishes this" and "we rang the city and asked" are different claims and you deserve to know which one you're reading.

4. What we will not publish

A fact whose only origin is another guide, a review site or an aggregator does not go in. It gets no stamp, it is markednoindex, and it stays out of the sitemap and off the lists until someone has actually checked it.

That rule has teeth. It is why our dog park pages — the seven fields for each park — are still not in search: the underlying details came from review sites, and until someone stands in each park with a notebook they are not something we're willing to publish as fact. It's enforced by the site's build rather than by our good intentions, so a draft can't be shipped as a fact by accident.

5. "Not confirmed" is a real answer

Where we don't know something, the page says "not confirmed" rather than guessing or quietly omitting it. An empty field on a park listing means we haven't checked it — it does not mean the park lacks the thing.

6. Corrections are published, not buried

When we get something wrong, we fix it, re-date it, and note on the page that it was corrected and when. A site that claims to be verified and silently rewrites its mistakes is worth less than one that never claimed it.

What we don't do

• We don't run a live water-quality or bloom tracker. Conditions change hourly and a stale "safe today" badge is worse than no badge. We link to DNREC and the Division of Public Health, who actually monitor it.
• We don't publish a rule we've only seen on an aggregator, no matter how many aggregators agree. Agreement between copies is not corroboration.
• We don't take payment to change or soften a listing. Lodging links may earn a commission; the fees, weight limits and policies we publish are what the property told us, and an unfavourable answer gets published the same as a favourable one.

Found something wrong?

Tell us and we'll check it and correct it. Local regulars know these rules better than any publisher does, and a correction from someone who was standing there yesterday is worth more than another phone call.Get in touch through Werth Design, who build and maintain this site.