Privacy Policy

What Dogz.guru is

Dogz.guru helps dog owners find people who will board their dog in that person’s own home. Owners describe their dog, hosts describe themselves and their home, and Dogz shows owners the homes that appear to fit. An owner can then send a host a request to discuss a stay.

Once a host says they are interested and the owner chooses to continue, the two of them can message each other inside Dogz about that one proposed stay.

Dogz does not take bookings, hold dates, process payments, or set prices. It does not inspect homes or verify anything anyone tells us.

Dogz.guru is not yet operated by a registered company, so this policy does not name a legal entity or a governing jurisdiction. Both will be added here once they exist.

Your account

Signing in is handled by 6away Auth (auth.6away.ai), a separate sign-in service we use. It checks who you are and tells Dogz an account identifier. Dogz never sees or stores your password.

Against that identifier we store:

• the account identifier itself, which is what your data is attached to;
• your email address, kept only so we can send you the notifications described below — we never use it to identify you, and no other user ever sees it;
• whether you use Dogz as a dog owner, a host, or both.

What owners tell us about their dogs

If you add a dog, you choose how much to fill in. It can include the dog’s name, breed, age, sex, size and weight; their temperament; how they are around other dogs, cats, children and unfamiliar people; how long they are comfortable alone; feeding, walking and sleeping routine; and what they need from a home.

It can also include information that is more sensitive in nature — whether the dog takes regular medication or needs extra care, and behaviour that matters for safety, such as whether they guard food, try to escape, or have bitten before. We ask for this because a host cannot look after a dog safely without it. You decide what to record, and you can change or clear any of it at any time.

What hosts tell us about themselves and their home

If you offer to host, you may provide your name and a short introduction, your experience with dogs, your city, area and country, the kind of home you have and its outdoor space, who else lives there including how many children and roughly what age, how calm or lively the household is, any resident pets, how many dogs you can take, and which dogs you are able to accept.

All of this is self-declared. Dogz does not check, inspect or verify any of it, and does not ask for your street address.

Stay requests

When an owner asks a host about a stay, we store which dog and which home it concerns, the proposed dates, an optional note from the owner, and the status of the request as it changes.

A request is a record of a conversation between two people, so it is kept after it has been declined or withdrawn. Both parties continue to see it in their history rather than it disappearing from one side.

Messages

A conversation only exists once both of you have chosen it: the host says they are interested, and then the owner chooses to continue. Until the owner does, there is no thread and neither of you can message the other. A conversation belongs to one stay request, so a later request means a new conversation rather than a reopened old one.

We store the text of each message, who sent it, and when. Both of you see the whole thread; nobody else does. Messages cannot be edited or deleted, because the history belongs to both of you rather than to whoever wrote it. If the request is withdrawn, declined or its dates pass, the conversation becomes read-only and what was said stays visible to both sides.

We do not read your messages to profile you, and nothing in them is analysed, scored, or sent to any AI service. We would only look at a conversation if we had to for a safety, legal or abuse reason.

Dogz never puts your email address or phone number into a conversation. Neither of you can see the other’s account details, and there is no button anywhere that reveals them. What we cannot do is stop somebody typing their own number into a message — so treat anything you type as something the other person will have.

Stay agreements

If the two of you settle on dates, we store those dates, whether the agreement is proposed, agreed, declined or withdrawn, and when each of you acted. That is all an agreement is — there is no price, no payment and no reference number attached to it, because Dogz handles no money.

The agreed dates are stored separately from the dates originally requested, so both remain readable: what you first asked about, and what you actually settled on. As with requests and messages, an agreement is shared between two people and is kept rather than deleted when it is declined or withdrawn.

Either of you can later propose different dates. We store each proposal separately: the dates the stay stood at, the dates asked for, which of you asked, when, and whether it was accepted, declined or withdrawn. Nothing is overwritten, so the history of a stay that moved twice still shows both moves.

Either of you can also cancel an agreed stay. We store that it was cancelled, when, which of you did it, and — if you chose to say — one of a short list of reasons. There is no free text, and the reason is shown only to the other person. Cancelling deletes nothing: the agreement, the dates you had agreed and your whole conversation stay readable to you both. Because Dogz handles no money, no fee, penalty or refund is attached to any of it.

What happened on a stay

Once the agreed dates have passed, we ask each of you what actually happened: whether the stay went ahead, didn’t go ahead, or ended early. We store your answer, that it was you who gave it, and when. There is nothing to write — it is one of those three choices.

Neither of you sees the other’s answer until you have both given one. Until then you are told only that they have answered, so that you each answer for yourself rather than copying. We keep both answers even when they differ; we do not decide between them, and we do not check either of them.

We use these answers for one thing: to decide whether the stay can be reviewed, which needs both of you to have said it went ahead.

Reviews

After a stay you both recorded as having happened, each of you can leave one review of it: a rating out of five and, if you want, a short note. We store the rating, the note, which of you wrote it and when.

Neither of you sees the other’s review until you have both written one — until then you are told only that a review exists. A review can’t be edited or deleted afterwards, because it becomes part of a record you share with somebody else.

Once you have both written one, two things happen, and they are different from each other.

The star rating an owner gives a host is shown to other signed-in Dogz users looking at that host. It appears as a number out of five and the month it was written — never your name, your dog, the dates you stayed, or anything else about you. Alongside it we show the average of that host’s ratings and how many there are. Those are worked out when the page is drawn; we store no score about anybody.

The note an owner writes is not shown to anyone but that host, and a host’s review of an owner and their dog is not shown to anyone but that owner. We publish ratings rather than written notes because a note can mention where somebody lives, and Dogz holds no address precisely so that it cannot be spread. Nothing about owners or dogs is public at all — there is no owner rating, and nothing you or your dog did appears anywhere another owner can see.

Nothing is shown to anybody until you have both written, so no one can read the other’s before deciding what to say. Reviews of a stay that was cancelled, that you recorded differently, or that only one of you reviewed are not shown to anyone. We don’t check reviews, don’t decide who is right, and nothing in them is analysed or sent to any AI service. If any of this changes we will say so here first.

What other people can see

Profiles are private by default, but Dogz would not work if nothing crossed between users. Four things are shared deliberately, and only these:

• Homes in search. A host’s home only becomes findable when that host explicitly switches discovery on. Signed-in owners then see an approved summary — the host’s name and introduction, their experience, city and area, home type, outdoor space, household make-up, resident pets and which dogs they accept. Hosts can pause this at any time.
• Your dog, when you ask about a stay. Sending a request shows that host an approved care summary of your dog — the information above that bears on looking after them, including medication, care and behaviour notes, plus your note. It is shown to that one host, because you asked them.
• Existing requests. If a host later pauses their home, people who already have a request with them keep seeing it. Pausing hides a home from search; it does not erase a request already under way.
• What you write in a conversation. Once you have both chosen to continue, each message you send is shown to the other person in full. That is the point of it — but it means a message is the one thing on Dogz whose contents you are handing over yourself.

What other users never see

No other user is shown your email address, a phone number, your account identifier, or a street address — we hold no street address at all. There are no public profiles: nothing about you, your dog or your home is visible to anyone who is not signed in, and none of it is indexed by search engines.

Guru Match

Dogz compares what an owner recorded about their dog with what a host recorded about their home, and describes how well they appear to fit and what is worth checking. This is a fixed set of written rules applied to the answers both sides gave. It is not artificial intelligence, it does not learn from you, and your information is not sent to any AI service.

It is guidance to help two people judge a fit for themselves. It is not a guarantee of safety, suitability, or how a stay will go.

Emails we send

We email you when something happens on a request you are part of: a new request arrives for your home, a host says they are interested, a host declines, an owner withdraws, or the other person sends you a message.

These emails are deliberately thin. They carry the dog’s name, the host’s name, the proposed dates and a link to sign in — and nothing else. Notes, medication, behaviour information and contact details are never put in an email; you sign in to see them. The text of a message is never included in the email that tells you it arrived — you sign in to read it.

These are service messages about your own activity. We do not currently send marketing or promotional email. If that ever changes we will say so here first, and it would be something you opt into separately.

Cookies

This site sets no cookies at all, and loads nothing from another company’s servers. Fonts are served from dogz.guru itself and photographs are fetched by our server and re-served from dogz.guru, so your browser never contacts the image provider.

The application at app.dogz.guru sets cookies only where signing in requires it: a handful of short-lived cookies that protect the sign-in exchange itself, and one cookie that keeps you signed in afterwards. All of them are restricted to our own site and cannot be read by scripts in your browser. There are no advertising or tracking cookies, and browsing app.dogz.guru while signed out sets nothing.

There is no analytics product anywhere on Dogz.guru, and no third-party tracking or advertising script. Nobody outside the companies listed below receives anything about what you do here, and there is no cross-site tracking of any kind.

What we record about using Dogz

We keep one small record of product use, so we can tell whether Dogz is actually working: each time a signed-in owner searches for homes, we store that a search happened, how many homes it found, and when.

That is the whole of it. We do not store what you searched for, which dog you were searching for, which city, which homes came back, or anything from a Dog Passport — and there is no record of pages you visit, buttons you press, how long you stay or where you are. We keep it because “nobody is looking” and “people look and find nobody” are different problems, and we cannot tell them apart otherwise.

Everything else we could want to know is already answered by the things you deliberately created — a request you sent, a stay you agreed, a review you wrote — so we count those rather than watching you.

Who processes your information

These companies handle data on our behalf so Dogz can run:

• Vercel — hosting for both the site and the application, and the server logs that come with it. Those logs can include your IP address and browser, and exist so the service can be operated and debugged.
• Neon — the database holding everything described above, currently in Amazon Web Services’ us-east-1 region in the United States.
• 6away Auth — sign-in, run by the same people as Dogz.guru.
• Resend — delivery of the notification emails above.

Beyond these, no one else receives your information. We do not sell it, rent it, or share it for anyone else’s marketing. If we were ever legally required to disclose something, we would do so only to the extent required.

Where it goes

Dogz.guru is starting in Dubai and intends to operate internationally. The database is currently in the United States, and email delivery is processed outside the country you are in, whichever that is. If you are not comfortable with that, please don’t use Dogz — or ask us to delete your information, which we will do subject to what follows.

How long we keep it, and getting it removed

We keep your information for as long as you use Dogz. There is no self-service delete button yet — that is honest rather than ideal, and it is on the list.

In the meantime, email privacy@dogz.guru from the address on your account and we will tell you what we hold, correct it, send you a copy, or delete it. Deletion is handled by a person rather than a button, so please allow a little time.

One limit worth stating plainly: a stay request, and any conversation that grew out of it, is shared between two people. Where deleting your information would remove the other party’s record of an exchange they took part in — including messages they received from you — we may keep the minimum needed for that, and for genuine legal, security or dispute reasons. We will tell you if that applies to you.

Depending on where you live you may have statutory rights over your personal data and the right to complain to a regulator. We are not claiming certification under any particular framework; we are describing what we actually do.

Children

Dogz is intended for adults. Hosts are asked roughly how many children live in their home and the age band of the youngest, because it affects whether a dog will settle there — we never ask for a child’s name or date of birth. If a child has created an account, email us and we will remove it.

Changes

We update this page when the product changes, and change the date at the top when we do. If a change materially affects how we handle your information we will email the people it affects before it takes effect.

Contact

privacy@dogz.guru