Legal
Terms of use
Short, and honest about what the guide can and cannot promise you. The important part is the first one, so it is first.
The clause that matters
This guide is information, not a guarantee
Every entry records what a public source said on the day somebody read it. Rules change, and they change without telling us. Seasonal beach hours move, trial closures appear, a cafe changes hands, a council rewrites its dog management policy in March.
So before you drive anywhere on the strength of an entry, check it with the land manager or the venue. The sign at the gate and the current council, park or venue policy beat anything written here, every time. If the two disagree, the sign wins and we would like to know.
- National park usually means no dog.
- Beach rules are seasonal and local.
- An entry carries a date.
Using A Hound's Guide means accepting what follows. It is short on purpose. If something here is unclear, ask us rather than guessing.
Accuracy, and what we do about it
Entries are built from public sources: a council page or dog management policy, a national park page, a state tourism body, or the venue's own site. Each one lists those sources and the date they were read. Where a dog policy cannot be confirmed from a source like that, the place is left out rather than guessed at.
That is care, not certainty. We do not warrant that an entry is current, complete or correct at the moment you read it, and we are not responsible for a wasted trip, a fine, or anything else that follows from relying on an entry instead of checking it. If you find something wrong, tell us and we will fix it, which is genuinely the fastest way the guide improves.
Your dog is yours
You are responsible for your dog, at every place listed here. That includes the local rules that apply to it: lead laws, leash lengths, declared dangerous dog orders, council permits, effective control requirements in off-lead areas, and wildlife protections in the places that have them.
Listing a place does not mean it is safe for your particular dog on the day you visit. Tides, traffic, snakes, baiting programs, other dogs and hot sand are all real, and none of them are things the guide can see from here.
Listings are not endorsements
A place is in the guide because its dog policy could be confirmed, not because it paid to be there. There is no paid placement, no sponsored ranking and no affiliate arrangement behind any entry. Nobody can buy a better rating, and asking is the quickest way to be left out.
Equally, an entry is not a recommendation of a business, and the Guide's rating is an editorial opinion about how well a place works for a dog, not a statement about the business itself. A venue that would like a correction should email us with the page that states its current policy.
Your account
Sign-in is a six digit code sent to your email address, so access to your account is access to your email. Keep that secure, and tell us if you think somebody else has reached your account. What you do while signed in is your responsibility.
We can suspend or remove an account that is being used to abuse the guide or the people in it. You can delete yours at any time from your account page. What happens to your information when you do is set out in the privacy policy.
Reviews and anything else you post
Member reviews are the useful counterweight to an editorial entry, and they only work if they are real. So:
- Write about a place you have actually been, with a dog, yourself.
- Say what you saw. Whether you were made welcome, whether there was room, water and shade, whether it felt safe.
- Do not post anything untrue about a business or a person, anything abusive, or anything that identifies somebody else without their say-so.
- No advertising, no spam, no reviews written for or against a competitor.
- A rating is your opinion of a place. It never decides whether dogs are allowed there, which is a matter of policy, not of taste.
You keep ownership of what you write. By posting it you give us permission to publish it on the guide, alongside the place it is about, with your shortened display name. We can edit a review for length or clarity, and we can remove one that breaks the rules above or that we cannot stand behind. We are not obliged to publish anything, and we do not promise to keep a review up forever.
The same goes for a place you submit. Send it with a link to the page that states the dog rules, and it joins the queue to be checked. Submitting a place does not guarantee it will be added, and if it is added, the entry is written by us from the source.
Links to other sites
Entries link out to councils, parks, venues and map services, because the source is the point. Those sites are not ours, we do not control what they say or do, and a link is not an endorsement of them.
What belongs to whom
The writing, the design, the logo and the way entries are put together belong to A Hound's Guide. Read the guide, link to it, and quote a sentence with a credit. Do not scrape it or republish it wholesale as your own directory.
Map data and map tiles come from OpenStreetMap and its contributors, and are used under OpenStreetMap's own licence and terms.
Liability
The guide is provided as it is, free to use, and we exclude the warranties the law allows us to exclude. Nothing here tries to exclude or limit your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, because those rights cannot be excluded. Where a liability cannot be excluded and can be limited, our liability is limited to supplying the guide again, which in practice means fixing the entry.
Changes, and the law that applies
These terms can change as the guide grows. The date at the top says when they last did, and continuing to use the guide after a change means accepting the new version. These terms are governed by the law of Australia.
Getting in touch
Corrections, complaints, removal requests and questions about any of this go to hello@ahoundsguide.com. A correction with a link to the current policy page gets actioned fastest.