Legal

Terms of Service

Last updated: 13 October 2026 · Contact: hello@bighappy.com

1. Agreement to these terms

These Terms of Service govern your use of bighappy.com and any related pages, feeds or newsletters (together, the “Service”), operated by Big Happy (“we”, “us”). By accessing the Service you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service. If you use the Service on behalf of a business, you confirm you have authority to bind that business.

2. What this service is — and is not

The Service is an informational directory. It describes places that may welcome pets, based on research and reader reports.

• We are not a venue, an agent, a booking platform or a payment intermediary. We do not take reservations, hold deposits or process payments for any listed place.
• We have no agency, partnership, joint venture or employment relationship with any listed venue. A listing is not a recommendation, endorsement, certification or guarantee of quality, safety, accessibility or suitability.
• We do not control any venue. Opening hours, pet policies, fees, weight limits and off-leash designations are set by the venue or by a public authority, and any of them can change at any time without notice to us.
• Nothing on the Service is veterinary, nutritional, legal, safety, travel or professional advice. See the Disclaimer.

3. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Scrape, crawl, harvest or bulk-extract content or contact details, whether manually or by automated means, other than crawling that respects our robots.txt and normal search-engine indexing.
• Use the Service to send unsolicited commercial messages, or to compile any mailing list, database or dataset derived from it.
• Frame, mirror, proxy or present the Service, or any substantial part of it, as your own or as part of another service.
• Introduce malware, attempt to gain unauthorised access, probe or overload our infrastructure, or interfere with any other user's access.
• Misrepresent an affiliation with us, or use our name or marks in a way that suggests endorsement of a venue, product or service.
• Post, submit or transmit anything unlawful, defamatory, harassing, discriminatory or infringing, or anything that violates animal welfare or wildlife protection rules.

We may suspend or block access, and remove content, if we reasonably believe these rules have been broken.

4. Intellectual property

The Service, including its text, editorial descriptions, structured listing data, design, layout, code and marks, is owned by us or licensed to us and is protected by copyright and other laws. Trademarks, trade names and logos of third parties belong to their respective owners and are used only to identify the places described.

You may:

• Read, print or save pages for your own personal, non-commercial use.
• Quote short extracts with clear attribution and a link to the source page.
• Link to any page on the Service.

You may not copy, republish, translate, resell or redistribute listings or editorial content at scale, or use them to train a machine-learning model, without our prior written permission. Requests go to hello@bighappy.com.

Imagery. Listings carry either a real photograph, credited on the image and reused under the photographer's open licence, or a plain placeholder meaning no verified photograph is available yet. We do not publish generated or invented images of places. Photographs are not presented as current, accurate depictions of any named venue, person or animal and may be out of date.

5. Submissions from readers and venues

When you send us a listing suggestion, correction, photograph, review or other content (“Submission”), you:

• Confirm you own the Submission or have all rights needed to share it, and that it does not infringe anyone's rights or breach any confidentiality obligation.
• Confirm that any photograph of a recognisable person was taken with their consent, and that no image of a child is included without the consent of a parent or guardian.
• Grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, edit for length and clarity, publish, and display the Submission on the Service and in related newsletters or social posts.
• Accept that we may edit, decline or remove a Submission at our discretion, and that we are under no obligation to publish it or to pay for it.

You keep ownership of your Submission. You can ask us to remove it at any time by email, and we will do so within 30 days, except where we are required to retain it.

6. Accuracy, no warranty

We research carefully, but the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, completeness or non-infringement. We do not warrant that listings are current, that a venue will admit your animal, that a facility is safe, or that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free.

You are responsible for confirming details directly with a venue before travelling, for complying with all leash laws, animal control rules, park regulations and transport rules that apply, and for the conduct and supervision of your animal at all times.

7. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, goodwill, data or opportunities, arising out of or relating to your use of the Service — including any decision made on the basis of a listing, any refusal of entry to you or your animal, any injury, illness, loss or damage occurring at a listed place, or any reliance on a rating or description.

Our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you paid us in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) one hundred US dollars (US$100).

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. If you are a consumer resident in the European Union or the United Kingdom, nothing here removes mandatory rights you have under your local law.

8. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from claims, damages, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your breach of these terms, your Submission, or your use of the Service in violation of any law or third-party right.

9. Third-party links and bookings

The Service links to third-party sites, including maps, venue websites and booking or retail partners. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content, terms, privacy practices or performance. A booking you make is between you and that third party. Big Happy uses no affiliate links and takes no commission; see the Non-Commercial Policy.

10. Venue requests to amend or remove a listing

If you own or manage a listed venue and want a detail corrected, a policy updated, or the listing removed entirely, email hello@bighappy.com from an address at the venue's domain, or otherwise show that you speak for it. We will correct verified factual errors promptly and will remove a listing on request, without requiring a reason. Removal does not affect any historical record we may keep for audit purposes.

11. Copyright complaints

If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright, send a written notice to our designated contact at hello@bighappy.com with the subject line “Copyright complaint”, including:

1. Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to be infringed.
2. The exact URL of the allegedly infringing material.
3. Your name, address, telephone number and email address.
4. A statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent or the law.
5. A statement, made under penalty of perjury, that the information is accurate and that you are the owner or are authorised to act for the owner.
6. Your physical or electronic signature.

We will remove or disable access to material that is the subject of a valid notice and will notify the contributor where practical. If you believe your material was removed in error, you may send a counter-notice containing the equivalent information, and we will follow the procedure set out in the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 512.

12. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and the courts located in that state have exclusive jurisdiction, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in any competent court to protect its intellectual property. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, you may also bring proceedings in your country of residence and benefit from the mandatory consumer protections of that country.

Before starting formal proceedings, please email us — most disagreements are resolved by a reply.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. The date at the top of the page always shows the current version, and material changes will be flagged on the page for at least 30 days. Continued use after a change takes effect means you accept the revised terms.

Contact

hello@bighappy.com · contact page