Terms & Conditions

1. Welcome

Kia ora, and welcome to My Dog Rules. My Dog Rules helps New Zealand dog owners find out where their dogs can go, what the rules are when they get there, and what to watch out for along the way — plus useful features for owners and their dogs like where to find nearby dog related services like vets, groomers and pet stores, information on dog behaviour & nutrition, and common hazards plus a helpful guide if your dog goes missing.

My Dog Rules is owned and operated by Estate Wise Limited (Company No. 9374111), a New Zealand company ("we", "us", "our"). "The Service" means the My Dog Rules website and web application at mydogrules.co.nz, together with all content, features, and tools we make available through it, including when installed to your device as a progressive web app.

These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") are a legal agreement between you and us. Four companion documents form part of these Terms and are incorporated by reference: our Privacy Policy, Subscriptions & Refunds Policy, Website & Acceptable Use Terms (which contains your licence to use the Service and the content and conduct rules), and our Disclaimer. If there is any inconsistency, these Terms prevail, except that the Privacy Policy prevails on privacy matters and the Subscriptions & Refunds Policy prevails on billing matters.

In plain English: This is the contract between you and us. Four companion documents — Privacy, Subscriptions & Refunds, Acceptable Use (including your licence), and the Disclaimer — form part of the deal too.

2. Accepting these Terms

When you create an account, we ask you to tick a box confirming you agree to these Terms and have read the Privacy Policy. That tick, or your continued use of the Service, forms a binding agreement between you and us.

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account and use the Service, and you confirm this when you sign up.

3. What the Service includes

The Service currently includes:

• Dog-access map and rules: an interactive map of parks, beaches, and public places across New Zealand showing dog-access information, with per-location council leash, seasonal, and access rules drawn from council publications, and the national baseline under the Dog Control Act 1996 where no specific rule is recorded;

• Safety information: per-location water and hazard signals, a hazard reference guide, and current hazard warnings (for example toxic algae or poison-control operations);

• Places and listings: dog-friendly venues (vets, cafés, groomers, stores, accommodation), campsites, and links to external directories and websites (for example, for events and public conservation land);

• Reviews and photos: member ratings, tags, comments, and photos of dog spaces (see section 6);

• AI assistants: behaviour and nutrition assistants that answer general questions about living with your dog, with optional spoken playback (see section 5);

• Lost & found tools: a lost-dog action plan, a printable lost-dog poster generator, and a found-a-dog guide (see section 7);

• Resources: a dog owners' handbook, a council directory, and educational pet-insurance Q&A; and

• Premium subscription: access to the Service's member features by paid subscription, starting with a 7-day free trial (see section 8).

4. Guidance only — the official rules always win

This is the most important section in this document, so we'll be direct: My Dog Rules is an information and guidance service. It is not the law, and it is not a substitute for official council information or on-site signage. Our full Disclaimer forms part of these Terms; its key points are:

• Councils make the rules, not us. Dog access rules are set by territorial authorities under the Dog Control Act 1996 and their bylaws and policies. We present rule information as sourced from council publications, and where no specific rule is recorded we state the Dog Control Act baseline rather than implying that no rules apply. If anything in the Service differs from a council's current bylaw, policy, or on-site signage, the council's version prevails and you must follow it.

• Rules change. Councils amend bylaws, impose seasonal restrictions, and close areas at any time. We take care to keep our data current, but we cannot guarantee it reflects the rules in force at any given moment.

• Always check signage. Before letting your dog off the leash, check the physical signs at the location and comply with any direction from council officers or rangers.

• Hazard and water signals are a guide, not an all-clear. Where our data is limited we deliberately hedge rather than assert that a place is hazard-free or water-free. Absence of a warning is never a guarantee of safety — assess conditions on the day.

• Third-party information may be stale. Venue, campsite, council-contact, and weather details come from third-party sources and may be inaccurate or out of date. Verify before relying on them (for example, phone ahead).

• Boundaries are approximate. Map boundaries, zones, and markers are indicative.

Nothing in this section, or in the Disclaimer, excludes or limits rights you have under the Fair Trading Act 1986 or the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 that cannot lawfully be excluded. These provisions define what the Service is and how it should be relied on; they are not an attempt to contract out of consumer law.

In plain English: We give you the best information we can, and we're honest about its limits: councils set the rules, signs on the ground trump the app, and 'no hazard shown' never means 'no hazard exists'.

5. AI features

5.1 AI-assisted content

Some content in the Service — including rule summaries, location descriptions, and safety notes — is produced or synthesised with the assistance of artificial intelligence working from source documents such as council publications, and is subject to human review processes. AI-assisted content can contain errors or become out of date. Treat it as helpful guidance, not an authoritative statement of the rules.

5.2 The behaviour and nutrition assistants

• General information only. The AI assistants provide general information about dog behaviour, training, feeding, and nutrition. Their answers are AI-generated, may be wrong, and are not tailored to your dog.

• Not veterinary advice. The assistants do not provide veterinary diagnosis, treatment, or advice, and nothing in the Service should be taken as the practice of veterinary science (which only registered veterinarians may carry out under the Veterinarians Act 2005). For any medical condition, allergy, suspected poisoning, or whenever in doubt — especially about diet — consult a veterinarian.

• Access rules are answered by the rules panel, not the AI. The assistants are designed to decline questions about where dogs may go or leash requirements and to direct you to the rules information for the location. Do not rely on an AI chat answer for access or leash rules.

• Reliance is your choice. You are responsible for how you act on assistant answers. A notice to this effect appears in the chat itself.

6. Your content — reviews and photos

Members can rate, tag, comment on, and photograph dog spaces. We love this content — it's what makes the map live. The full content rules are in the Website & Acceptable Use Terms; the essentials:

• Your licence to us: you keep ownership of what you post. You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to host, store, reproduce, adapt (for example, resizing or re-encoding photos), display, moderate, and remove your reviews and photos as part of operating the Service. Because reviews are a public contribution displayed without your name, this licence survives the deletion of your account (see the Privacy Policy for what is and isn't deleted).

• Your promises: you warrant that you created or have the right to publish the content, that it is lawful and doesn't infringe anyone's rights, and that no identifiable person shown in a photo objects to its publication.

• We host, we don't author: reviews and photos are contributed by users and don't represent our views. We don't pre-vet review text and we don't endorse it. Photos pass through an automated safety screen and are stripped of embedded location data before publication.

• Reporting and removal: anyone can report a photo or review using the in-app report control or by emailing support@mydogrules.co.nz. Reports queue for human review — a single report doesn't automatically remove content (this protects contributors from abuse of the report button), but we act promptly on genuine problems and may remove any content at our discretion.

7. Lost & found

• The poster is yours. The lost-dog poster generator assembles a poster from details you choose to include — which may include your phone number and your dog's microchip number. We generate it; you publish it. Once you share a poster, it is public and outside our control. A notice reminds you of this before you share.

• Rewards. Any reward you offer on a poster is an offer between you and the finder. We are not a party to it, we don't hold or guarantee reward money, and we have no obligation to enforce it.

• Third-party listing sites. Links to external lost-and-found listing services (and any content you post there) are governed by those sites' own terms.

8. Premium and the free trial

My Dog Rules is a subscription service. A Premium subscription — monthly or annual — is what gives you access to the Service's member features, and it starts with a 7-day free trial so you can make sure it's right for you and your dog before paying anything. If we introduce a free tier in the future, we'll say so clearly in the app, and these Terms will apply to it too. The key commercial terms, stated plainly because we're required to (and because you deserve it):

• 7-day free trial with your card up front: Premium starts with a 7-day free trial. Your card is collected when you start the trial and will be charged automatically when the trial ends unless you cancel first. The trial end date and the price you'll be charged are shown before you confirm.

• One trial per person, ever: each user is entitled to one free trial only.

• Auto-renewal: subscriptions renew automatically each billing period until you cancel. You can cancel any time, effective at the end of the current period.

• Prices: stated in New Zealand dollars, GST-inclusive, at the point of purchase. Promotional discounts (such as a first-year launch discount) apply on the terms stated with the offer; after a discounted period, the then-current standard price applies.

Cancellation, refunds, failed payments, and plan changes are governed by the Subscriptions & Refunds Policy. If we increase the price of your subscription, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice before it applies to you, and you can cancel before it takes effect.

9. Sponsored listings

Some venue listings are paid placements by partners. Paid placements are labelled in words (for example "Sponsored" or "Partner") so you can always tell them apart from organic results, and if payment affects ranking or ordering, we disclose that too. A sponsored label is a statement about placement, not our endorsement of the venue.

10. Your responsibilities as a dog owner

• Comply with the Dog Control Act 1996, your council's bylaws and policies, and all on-site signage — including registration, microchipping, and leashing obligations;

• Keep your dog under control at all times and respect wildlife areas, stock, and other users of shared spaces; and

• Use your own judgement about whether a location, venue, or activity is suitable for you and your dog on the day.

11. Intellectual property

The Service — our software, database compilations, original text, safety methodology, design, graphics, and the My Dog Rules name and branding — is owned by us or our licensors and protected under the Copyright Act 1994, the Trade Marks Act 2002, and other laws. The Website & Acceptable Use Terms set out your licence to use the Service and the things you must not do with it (short version: use it personally, don't share your login, don't scrape or republish our data).

Some source material comes from councils, government agencies, and open-data providers. Map display and place data are provided by Mapbox, whose place data is derived from OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, made available under the Open Database Licence). The Mapbox and OpenStreetMap attributions are displayed on every map in the Service and must not be removed or obscured. Certain behind-the-scenes processing (such as automated content moderation and geocoding) is performed by other providers described in our Privacy Policy; the Service does not display Google-branded place listings. Our compilation, enrichment, and original expression of source material remain our property.

12. Consumer law — your protections come first

• Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 (CGA): if you acquire the Service for personal, domestic, or household use, our services come with guarantees that cannot be excluded, including that they will be performed with reasonable care and skill. Nothing in these Terms limits your rights under the CGA.

• Fair Trading Act 1986 (FTA): nothing in these Terms limits your rights, or our obligations, under the FTA, including in relation to misleading or deceptive conduct. We know we cannot contract out of the FTA with a consumer, and we don't try to.

• Business use: if you use the Service in trade (for example, in a commercial dog-walking business), you agree that the CGA does not apply and that this is fair and reasonable in the circumstances, as section 43(2) of the CGA permits.

13. Our liability

Subject always to section 12 (which prevails over everything in this section):

• Information reliance: we are not liable for loss arising from reliance on rule information, map boundaries, safety signals, AI assistant answers, or third-party venue or listing details that prove inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date — check signage, verify locally, and see the Disclaimer.

• User content and third parties: we are not liable for content contributed by users, for third-party websites we link to, for the acts or omissions of councils or venues, or for arrangements (including rewards) you enter into with other people.

• No indirect loss: to the maximum extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profits, or loss of data.

• Liability cap: to the maximum extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability to you in connection with the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, and (b) NZ$100.

• What we never exclude: nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under New Zealand law, including under the CGA and FTA for consumers.

In plain English: If you're a consumer, your CGA and FTA rights are fully preserved. Beyond those, our liability is capped, and we're not responsible for losses caused by rule changes, third parties, user content, or decisions you make on the ground.

14. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify us against loss we suffer arising directly from your breach of these Terms (including the content warranties in section 6) or your unlawful use of the Service, except to the extent we caused or contributed to that loss. This clause does not apply to you if and to the extent it would be unenforceable against a consumer under New Zealand law.

15. Suspension, termination, and account deletion

• You can close your account at any time from your account settings. Closing your account cancels any active Premium subscription so you won't be charged again; the Subscriptions & Refunds Policy explains the billing consequences, and the Privacy Policy explains what data is deleted and what is retained (in short: billing records for tax law, and public review contributions).

• We may suspend or terminate your account if you materially breach these Terms or the Website & Acceptable Use Terms, or if we reasonably believe your use poses a risk to the Service or other users. Where practicable we'll warn you first and give you a chance to put things right; for serious breaches (such as unlawful content, security attacks, or bulk data extraction) we may act immediately.

• We may discontinue the Service or any feature. If we discontinue Premium entirely, we'll refund the unused portion of any prepaid subscription.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes we'll give you reasonable advance notice by email or in-app notice. Continued use after a change takes effect is acceptance of it. If you don't agree, you may cancel; if you've prepaid for Premium and a material change disadvantages you, we'll refund the unused portion.

17. Disputes, governing law, and general

• Governing law: New Zealand law applies, and the New Zealand courts (including, where applicable, the Disputes Tribunal) have jurisdiction. Please contact us before taking formal action — most issues can be sorted with a conversation.

• Severability: if any part of these Terms is unenforceable, the rest still applies.

• No waiver: if we don't enforce a right straight away, we haven't given it up.

• Assignment: you may not transfer your rights under these Terms. We may assign ours to a related company or a purchaser of the business, provided your rights are not reduced.

• Entire agreement: these Terms (with the incorporated policies) are the whole agreement between us about the Service.

• Notices: we'll send notices to your registered email address; you can reach us at the contact details below.

How to contact us

Questions, feedback, or a wagging complaint? We would genuinely like to hear from you.

• Company: Estate Wise Limited (Company No. 9374111), trading as My Dog Rules

• Email: support@mydogrules.co.nz

• Phone: +64 21 205 6078

• Address: 123 Grovenor Drive, Orewa, Auckland, New Zealand