Weird review - is it a joke?

[Slapin]

I do dog training and have 100% positive 5 star reviews. I’ve just noticed a new review left last night:

“My dog was acting like a cat, the academy beat it right out of him, old school style! Highly recommended”. He’s then given me 5 stars.

The actual review though is bizarre and suggests I use harsh training methods. Is it meant to be a joke? I can’t get rid of it.

Just a badly worded jokey review. I would delete your current reply and replace it with something good humoured but robustly stating that there was no beating or anything of the sort. Perhaps 'thanks for the 5 stars, glad you are happy with Lassie's fantastic progress. Beating is certainly not amongst our techniques though!'

Maybe add 'it was a pleasure working with you and her', make clear it was a positive experience.

Or reply with ‘ha ha...’ and then the rest.

Delete it. A lot of people won't get the 'humour'. Which I thought was distasteful ('beating' when so much animal cruelty involves just that).