Privacy
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
If you join our pack or fill out a contact form, we keep your information for purposes of sharing our updated blog posts and news with you.
Our site manager WordPress does not collect any personal data about you, but some of our plugins may collect personal data, and that is noted below.
When You Leave Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture or avatar is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
We use Akismet to protect our site from unwanted spam content. Here is the Akismet privacy policy:
Media (relevant to guest posts)
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded Content from Other Sites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
How Long We Retain Your Data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
What Rights You Have Over Your Data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
What third parties we receive data from
We may receive data about users from third parties, including advertisers or vendors, for purposes of tracking clicks through from this site.
Disclaimers
While we are dedicated, experienced researchers and pretty darn good writers, AND we have owned and loved dogs for over half a century, our work here is intended only as a jumping-off point for your consultations with your veterinarian or other specialist. Only you and those experts know your particular dog’s health and circumstances. We do not and cannot promise that our opinions or advice will work for you or your dogs in the way they work for us.
Our articles will help you navigate and think critically about everything that affects your dog and your relationship with your dog. We make every effort (and then some) to be accurate, reliable, and complete. But we do not know your dog or your circumstances. And because there is so much debate and unknown about how best to raise our animal companions, we may feature contradictory opinions from competing experts or information that current scientific thought later deems inaccurate. We do not provide veterinary, nutritional, or behavioral advice for you to use on your dog. You must always, always, always consult your veterinarian, veterinary nutritionist, animal behavior specialist or other appropriate professional. And then research that advice yourself as well!
Disclosures
Small Dog Rules does not accept anything in exchange for a positive review or mention in our research articles. We do sometimes receive a referral fee from online stores like Amazon if you click through our website to theirs. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Our primary mission is to provide great information about living well with small dogs, and when we’ve researched products and share that information, it’s because of their quality and not because of any commission we may receive. Many times, we provide links to products where we do NOT earn a commission, and that’s ok too. We are, however, grateful for your support of our work! That support helps keep our information free for everyone.
Terms of Use and Reservation of Rights
Copyright 2022 by Karen L. Izzo and Small Dog Rules. All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without express written permission of the author/publisher, except by those who may quote brief passages with appropriate attribution.
