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Privacy Policy

Last updated November 5, 2026

Plain-language note: we've written this to be readable. It explains what Houndtrust LLC collects, why, who we share it with, and the choices you have.

This Privacy Policy describes how Houndtrust LLC (“Houndtrust,” “we,” “us”) handles personal information in connection with the Houndtrust software and websites (the “Service”). It applies to Providers (the independent dog-care professionals who use Houndtrust to run their business), to Clients (a Provider's customers, who use the Service at the Provider's invitation to share information, sign documents, or view updates), and to Visitors who use our public course, care-request, community, chat, or card-making features without a Provider account.

Our role: who controls the data

For a Provider's own account information, Houndtrust is the controller. For the Client and pet information a Provider collects through the Service (for example through an intake link or the owner portal), the Provider is the controller and Houndtrust acts as the Provider's service provider/processor - we process that information to provide the Service under our agreement with the Provider and the Provider's use and configuration of the Service. We also use limited data for a few narrow operational purposes of our own - keeping the Service secure, monitoring errors, understanding how it's used so we can improve it, and managing accounts and billing - and for those we act as our own controller. We never use your pet's care information to advertise to you, and we never sell it. If you are a Client with questions about your information, contact the dog-care professional you work with; we will help them respond. Houndtrust is the controller of information a Visitor gives us directly through a public Houndtrust feature.

For a Client card payment, the Provider is the merchant of record and controls the underlying care transaction and customer relationship. Stripe provides payment processing under its agreements with Houndtrust and the Provider. Stripe may act as a processor for the merchant and may also use payment data for its own legal, security, fraud-prevention, and service purposes as described in the Stripe Privacy Policy. Houndtrust acts as its own controller when it uses limited payment and risk information to secure the Service, enforce payment limits, and investigate misuse.

Information we collect

Before signup: when you submit the setup questionnaire, we save your email, selected services, business name if provided, progress, and reminder choice. We use these details to help you finish setup. If you opt in, we may send up to two signup reminders, at least seven days apart. Each includes an unsubscribe link. Saved pre-signup contacts expire after 30 days and are removed by our daily cleanup. Completing an account stops signup reminders; ordinary account records follow the retention rules below.

Provider account information: name, email, password (stored only as a secure hash), business details (business name, address, contact info), and subscription status.

Information entered into the Service: the client, pet, booking, service, and money information a Provider enters or that a Client submits through an intake link. This can include an owner's name, email, phone, and ZIP; a pet's care notes, medications, allergies, and veterinarian; emergency-contact details; and - because the Service is built for real-world care - security-sensitive details such as home-access or lockbox codes (which are stored for the Provider only) and signed waivers and authorizations.

Photos and files: update photos, logos, profile images, public care or community photos, card photos, and any documents a Client uploads (such as vaccination records or a photo of a form) are stored in our file storage. Client documents are private to the Client and Provider. Other images may appear through a unique shared link, on a published Provider profile, or publicly when the person submitting them chooses a public community or card feature.

Payment information: Stripe handles Provider subscriptions and optional Client card payments made to a Provider's connected account. Card details and the billing address are entered on Stripe's hosted checkout and pass directly to Stripe. Houndtrust does not receive or store full card numbers or card security codes. We receive transaction identifiers, amounts, tips, application fees, payment status, refund status, dispute status, payer contact details, Stripe risk results, and a one-way hash of Stripe's card fingerprint when available. We use that information to reconcile payment requests, show receipts, limit card testing, detect possible self-payments or stolen-card use, and review fraud reports.

Technical and audit information: standard server logs to keep the Service running and secure, and - for intake submissions and electronic signatures - an IP address and timestamp recorded as part of the audit trail for that record.

Public features: if you join the free course, make a card, post a care request, submit community content, or send feedback, we collect the information shown in that form. Depending on the feature, that may include an email address, phone number, name, ZIP or neighborhood, pet details, dates, a photo, and the words you submit. We also use limited IP, referral, and device information for security, rate limits, confirmation, and attribution.

Text-message information: if you choose text messages, we record the phone number, the wording you agreed to, when and where you agreed, and later STOP, START, or HELP requests. We also receive message identifiers, delivery status, and error codes from our text provider. We do not use Client phone numbers for Houndtrust marketing. We do not sell or share mobile phone numbers or text-message opt-in data with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. We disclose mobile information only to service providers needed to deliver and secure the text-message service, such as Twilio, as described below.

Walk location data: when a Provider chooses to track a walk, the browser records the walk's GPS route, distance, and duration on the Provider's device, only while tracking is on, and saves it with that update so the owner can see the route on their Stay Card. Location permission is asked for by the browser and can be declined - updates work fine without a walk. We never track location in the background or outside an active walk.

Attribution cookie: when you arrive from a referral or campaign link, we store a first-party cookie (for about 30 days) noting where the visit came from, so we can understand which channels bring people to Houndtrust. See “Cookies” below.

Your owner portal

If a Provider invites you, you can create a Houndtrust owner account to manage your pet's care in one place. When you do, we store your email address, whether it has been confirmed, and the secure sign-in tokens that keep you logged in. The account stays active between bookings so you can return to it; you can ask us or your Provider to close it at any time.

From the portal you can review and update your pet's details (such as feeding, medications, allergies, behavior, routine, vet, and emergency contact); send and receive messages with your Provider (we store these so you both have the history, and notify you by email when there's something new); request and track a stay, including its confirmation, agreement, payment, and review status; and upload documents such as vaccination records. Documents are stored in our file storage (Supabase, on Amazon Web Services in the U.S.) and shared only with your Provider. This information is handled under the same protections described in this Policy, and your Provider remains the controller of your pet's care information.

How we use information

We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. We do not use Client data for our own marketing.

Text messages and your choices

Text messages are optional. If you check a text-message box, Houndtrust may send automated transactional texts on behalf of your Provider about requests, bookings, reminders, account notices, and pet-care updates. Message frequency varies. Message and data rates may apply.

Reply STOP, QUIT, END, REVOKE, OPT OUT, CANCEL, or UNSUBSCRIBE to stop Houndtrust texts to your number, START to opt back in, or HELP for help. We keep a shared suppression record so a STOP request applies across Providers who use the Houndtrust messaging service. Opting out of texts does not stop email or in-app messages. You can also ask your Provider or email hello@houndtrust.com for help with your text preference.

AI features

Some features use Anthropic (the maker of Claude) to process text:

When an AI feature is used, Houndtrust sends the text described above to Anthropic so it can return the requested result. Anthropic's handling and retention are governed by Houndtrust's service configuration and agreement with Anthropic. Do not include information the feature does not need. AI output can be inaccurate, so review anything before you send it.

HoundTrust plugin

When you use HoundTrust's free quote, invoice, weekly billing, intake-check or owner-update tools through ChatGPT, Claude or another compatible client, that client sends the inputs needed for the result to our server. These can include the service, dates or visit count, pet count, rates, discounts, reported payments, labels for billing records, intake-area statuses, and observations you supply for an owner update. Business, client and pet display names are optional. A nickname is enough. Do not include contact details, medical records, account credentials or payment-card information. We return the calculation, draft invoices, intake checklist or owner-update draft and its limitations to the client you used. Intake checks use your reported coverage, not the underlying client records. Owner updates use only the observations you provide.

These free tools do not connect to your HoundTrust account or read its records. They do not book care, verify payments, send invoices or messages, or save drafts in your account. The service processes inputs in memory and does not store or log request bodies, names or results. Netlify hosts the service and processes technical request information, such as IP addresses, request paths, response status and timing, for delivery, rate limiting, security and operational logs. On our current Netlify Pro plan, request-level Observability history is available to us for seven days; function logs cover up to seven days of activity. These periods describe the logs available to HoundTrust, not a promise that Netlify deletes every security or legal record after seven days. The tools do not send inputs to a separate model provider. ChatGPT or another client handles the conversation and returned results under its own terms, privacy policy and your account settings.

Optional account connections: where available, a business owner can separately sign in, choose one HoundTrust business, and approve the permissions shown before connecting ChatGPT or Claude. Connected tools can return client names and record identifiers, pet names, booking dates and status, service labels, business timezone, saved prices, and invoice drafts with recorded-payment amounts, calculated balances and unpaid-request counts. Recorded payments may have been marked paid manually; the draft does not independently verify them. This information goes to the assistant you connect and is handled under its privacy policy and your settings there. These tools do not return email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, care notes, medical records, home-access codes or payment-card details. With separate permissions, the assistant can also read supported business settings and prepare proposed booking, price or setting changes. The owner must review and confirm each exact change in HoundTrust. New bookings are saved as Requested and need the usual booking confirmation before care is confirmed. The integration cannot send invoices, create payment requests or charge anyone.

Email updates require a separate permission that starts off. If the owner enables it, the assistant can prepare updates using the observations the owner provides. HoundTrust shows the exact parents, email addresses and messages for review. Emails are sent only after the owner confirms them in HoundTrust, subject to recipient availability. The assistant cannot approve its own messages. The owner review page shows the saved email addresses used for delivery; these addresses are not returned to the connected assistant. Parent-update proposals store the prepared text, recipient and booking records, email destinations, approval decision and delivery results. These records stay with the business until it is deleted.

Text updates have their own permission that starts off. The recipient must have opted in to service texts at the saved phone number. If the owner enables this permission, the assistant can prepare a text from the observations the owner provides. Before sending, HoundTrust shows the owner the exact recipient, saved phone number and full message, including the business name and opt-out instructions. The owner must confirm each send in HoundTrust. Phone numbers are not returned to the connected assistant. HoundTrust checks the recipient's consent and STOP preference again before sending the text to its messaging provider. Clients can manage service-text consent separately in their portal; opting in there requires verification of the saved number and does not override a STOP request.

Text-update records include the destination phone number, full message, recipient, consent decision and disclosure, owner approval decision, and delivery status. Proposal records stay with the business until it is deleted. Text-message consent, opt-out and delivery records follow the retention rules below, including where needed to honor messaging choices or meet legal or carrier requirements.

We store the connected assistant, business, approving user and sign-in session, permissions, expiration and revocation records, and one-way hashes of connection credentials to authorize and secure access. Temporary connection cookies last up to 10 minutes. Connection access expires after 30 days or sooner if revoked or the approving user loses access. You can disconnect in Settings, including while new connections are unavailable. This stops future access but does not erase information already retrieved into your assistant conversations. Use that assistant's controls to manage those conversations.

Proposed changes store the requested fields, before and after values, connected assistant, approving owner, business, expiration and decision. Pending proposals expire after 15 minutes. Proposal and permission-change records remain with the business for accountability and are removed when that business is deleted. These records do not contain connection passwords or raw access tokens. Turning off a permission takes effect immediately and prevents pending proposals from being applied; adding access beyond the original consent requires a new connection approval. A proposal review link contains its record identifier so the owner can open it. The link does not grant access: owner sign-in and permission checks still apply.

Netlify describes its log windows in its Observability documentation and log documentation.

A result may include an optional link to the HoundTrust website. The link contains fixed source, service-category and workflow labels for attribution, but no names, dates, rates or draft contents. It does not transfer or save the draft. If you follow the link, the website's measurement choice below applies. Opening a link does not by itself permit optional analytics or attribution cookies. The page and tools work when you decline. Contact us using the details below with questions about plugin data handling.

Service providers we share with

We share personal information only as needed with providers that help us run the Service:

We also share information if required by law, to protect the Service or people's safety, or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets (subject to this Policy).

Cookies and device storage

The Service uses cookies and browser storage for sign-in, product features, limited optional product measurement, and optional ad measurement. Product measurement and Google Ads have separate choices. Neither choice is required to use Houndtrust. The categories below explain these separate uses:

Two related disclosures: Stay Card walk maps load map tiles from CARTO / OpenStreetMap, so the tile server receives the viewer's IP address (as with any image loaded from the web). And if a page errors, Sentry may capture a short, heavily-masked replay of the screens around the error (text and inputs are masked before they leave the browser) to help us fix it.

Optional product measurement

Choose whether Houndtrust may measure website use and where visits come from. While signed out, a change applies to this browser. To change product-use, signup and payment-conversion measurement tied to your account, sign in and make your choice here or on the HoundTrust plugin guide. An existing account preference is preserved when you sign in; a browser choice initializes it only if no account preference exists. This does not change your plan, payments, records or access to the tools.

Product analytics

Allow us to measure page visits, feature use and whether referrals lead to signup and payment. Your quotes and client details stay out of analytics. This is optional and separate from Google Ads.

Analytics is off in this browser. You can change this choice here. It does not delete measurements already collected.

Declining stops future optional measurement and clears this browser's attribution and analytics identifiers. It does not delete events already received by PostHog or ordinary business and payment records. Global Privacy Control also keeps browser product measurement off. To request deletion of previously collected analytics, contact hello@houndtrust.com.

Our current PostHog project uses an 84-month event retention window, with older events removed at the next monthly cleanup. Cookie and browser-identifier expiry does not remove those stored events. Associated analytics profiles remain until deleted; you can request their deletion using the contact above. We keep necessary security and payment records under the separate retention rules below.

Optional ad measurement

We use Google Ads measurement only if you select Accept. On visits where you have not accepted, we do not load the Google tag or send measurement data. Both Accept and Reject let you keep using Houndtrust. A browser's Global Privacy Control signal keeps this measurement off, even if you previously accepted it.

If you accept, we measure whether ads lead to a Provider finishing account setup and adding their first real client. Sample clients do not count. Google may receive ad-click and cookie identifiers, your IP address, browser and device information, and these limited milestone events. Google's tag also records visits to permitted pages. Those measurements can include the page address, the referring page, and campaign or ad-click parameters. Our account-setup and first-client events use a generic page address, omit a referring-page field, and use an opaque identifier to prevent duplicate counts. We do not add names, email addresses, phone numbers, client records, pet-care content, payment details, form entries, or private-link tokens to these event fields.

This setup does not use remarketing, personalized advertising, or enhanced conversions that send customer contact details to Google. It is separate from the PostHog product analytics described above. Google explains its handling of information, cookies, and your Google account choices in How Google uses information from sites or apps that use its services.

Use the choices below at any time, or follow Ad measurement choices in the website footer. Withdrawing permission stops future measurement, clears Houndtrust's first-party ad-measurement cookies and related storage, and reloads the page. It does not delete information already sent to Google or cookies stored on Google's own domains. Your choice applies to this browser; other browsers and devices have their own choices.

Checking your saved choice.

Public and shared links

Some features create links you can share - for example a client “update” card at a unique web address. Anyone with that link can view it, so only share it with the people you intend. A Provider's logo, avatar, and business profile may also be public when the Provider publishes a profile. Owner-made cards become viewable to anyone with the unique share link after the submitter confirms their email. They appear in Houndtrust's public Community feed only if the submitter separately chooses “Show publicly” and moderation is complete. Public care requests and Community posts appear only after the applicable public-sharing choice and confirmation or moderation. Contact information and exact locations are not displayed.

Storage, security, and retention

Data is stored with row-level security so each account can reach only its own records. We keep information while an account is active. When a Provider deletes their account in Settings, there is a 30-day window to change their mind and recover it; after that window, we delete or anonymize the account's information from active systems, except where we must keep records longer. Encrypted disaster-recovery backups are immutable and age out on their existing schedule: daily copies after 35 days, weekly copies after 180 days, and monthly copies after 400 days. Backups are not used in ordinary operations. Before restored data returns to normal use, we apply our deletion controls to records that should no longer be active. In particular, signed waivers and authorizations may be retained separately as legal records (including the signer's IP and timestamp) while reasonably needed for legal obligations or claims, and tax-relevant billing records are kept as required by law. We also keep text-message consent, opt-out, and delivery records for as long as needed to honor messaging choices, resolve delivery issues, and meet legal or carrier requirements.

We keep connected-card receipts, application-fee records, refunds, disputes, fraud warnings, and related security records while reasonably needed to operate payment features, prevent repeat abuse, answer a dispute, enforce our Terms, or meet legal and financial obligations. We limit access to payment-risk records to Houndtrust systems and staff who need them. Card numbers and card security codes are not part of those records because Stripe collects them directly.

A public care request stops appearing as an open request after 30 days. Course subscriber records remain until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete them. Owner-made cards and public care or Community submissions remain until you ask us to remove them, Houndtrust removes or closes the feature, or a legal or security need requires longer retention. Related confirmation and moderation records may be retained to document the request, protect the Service, or resolve a dispute. We keep minimal unsubscribe and text opt-out records as needed to honor those choices.

Your privacy rights (U.S. states)

Depending on where you live and whether an applicable law covers Houndtrust, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or obtain a portable copy of personal information, and to receive equal service when you exercise those rights. We do not sell personal information or use it for targeted advertising. You can reject or withdraw optional Google Ads measurement using the choices above. We also keep that measurement off when your browser sends Global Privacy Control.

Where Houndtrust processes Client data for a Provider, we use it to provide the Service under our agreement with the Provider and the Provider's use and configuration of the Service, and we assist the Provider with applicable requests.

If you have a Houndtrust account, you can handle two of these yourself in Settings: use Download my data for a portable copy of your provider identity and account business records, and delete your account there too. The export excludes security logs and authentication secrets. For other information or requests, email hello@houndtrust.com. We may need to verify your identity and the scope of the request before acting. If we deny a request and applicable law gives you an appeal right, reply to our decision and say that you want to appeal. If you are a Client, contact the dog-care professional you work with (the controller of your information); Houndtrust will assist them. Visitors who used a public feature can contact us directly.

Children

The Service is for businesses and is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child's information has been provided to us, contact us and we will delete it.

Where data is processed

Houndtrust is based in the United States. Our primary application database and uploaded files are hosted by Supabase on Amazon Web Services in the United States. Other providers listed above may process information in locations described in their applicable terms and subprocessor disclosures.

Changes to this Policy

We may update this Policy. If we make a material change we will give reasonable notice and update the “Last updated” date above.

Contact

Houndtrust LLC
Email: hello@houndtrust.com
Mailing address: Houndtrust LLC, 7533 S Center View Ct, Ste N, West Jordan, UT 84084