1. About Dog Happiness
Dog Happiness (doghappiness.com.au) helps you find dog-friendly parks, beaches, pubs, cafés, and other venues across New South Wales. We research dog access information using council regulations, venue websites, and community contributions, and present it in a way that’s useful for dog owners.
Dog Happiness is operated by DOG HAPPINESS (ABN 60 126 567 184).
By using this website, you agree to these Terms of Use. If you don’t agree, please don’t use the site.
2. Information Only — Not Professional Advice
Everything on Dog Happiness is general information to help you find dog-friendly places. It is not legal advice, veterinary advice, or a substitute for checking directly with a venue or council.
We do not guarantee that any venue will allow your dog on any given day. Venue policies, council regulations, and access conditions can change at any time without notice to us.
3. Accuracy and Currency
We work hard to provide useful, well-researched information based on the best evidence available — including council regulations, venue websites, and community reports. However, we do not warrant that the information on this site is accurate, complete, or current.
Dog access information on this site reflects what we have found from available sources at the time of assessment. It may not reflect recent changes. We recommend checking directly with a venue or council before making a special trip, particularly for hospitality venues where policies change frequently.
4. Your Responsibility
You are responsible for:
- Checking current venue policies before visiting, especially for cafés, pubs, and other hospitality venues where dog access policies can change at short notice.
- Complying with all applicable laws, council regulations, and venue rules when visiting any location listed on this site.
- Ensuring the safety and wellbeing of your dog and others at any venue you visit.
- Using your own judgment about whether a venue is suitable for your dog.
Dog Happiness helps you find information. The decision to visit a venue — and responsibility for what happens when you do — is yours.
5. Community Contributions
Dog Happiness allows users to submit reviews, photos, corrections, and other content (“User Content”). By submitting User Content, you:
- Grant Dog Happiness a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable licence to use, display, reproduce, modify, adapt, distribute, and create derivative works from your submission in connection with the Dog Happiness service.
- Confirm that you own or have the right to submit the content, and that it does not infringe any third party’s rights.
- Acknowledge that your submission may be displayed publicly on the site alongside the relevant venue.
- Understand that Dog Happiness may edit, remove, or decline to publish any submission at its discretion, including content that is inaccurate, misleading, offensive, or not relevant to the venue.
User Content reflects the views of the person who submitted it and has not necessarily been independently verified by Dog Happiness. We do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of User Content.
User corrections and reports are treated as signals that trigger our verification process — they do not automatically change venue information.
6. Venue Listings and Third-Party Content
Dog Happiness includes information sourced from council websites, venue websites, government data, OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, and other third-party sources. We do not control these sources and do not guarantee their accuracy or availability.
Listing a venue on Dog Happiness does not constitute an endorsement of that venue, its safety, its facilities, or its suitability for any particular dog or owner.
Where we link to third-party websites, those links are provided for convenience. We are not responsible for the content, accuracy, or availability of linked sites.
Dog Happiness may display publicly available review content sourced from third-party platforms (such as Google Reviews) in accordance with those platforms’ terms of use. Such content remains the property of the respective authors and platforms.
7. Intellectual Property
7.1 Ownership
All content on Dog Happiness — including text, design, logos, graphics, software, and the compilation and arrangement of venue information — is owned by Dog Happiness or its licensors and is protected by copyright under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) and applicable international intellectual property laws.
7.2 The Dog Happiness Venue Database
The Dog Happiness Venue Database constitutes an original compilation created through substantial intellectual effort, including manual research against primary council and government sources, independent verification, editorial classification of dog access status, and ongoing quality assurance review. This compilation is protected by copyright independently of any individual data points it contains.
The Venue Database includes, but is not limited to: dog access rules and descriptions, leash status classifications, access condition notes, curated source references, venue photographs, and the selection, coordination, and arrangement of all such data.
All rights, title, and interest in and to the Dog Happiness Venue Database are owned exclusively by Dog Happiness.
7.3 Permitted Use
You may view and use the site for personal, non-commercial purposes through normal browser-based access. You may share individual venue page URLs via social media, email, or messaging.
Nothing in these Terms grants you any right, title, or interest in the Dog Happiness Venue Database or any other content, except this limited right of personal use.
7.4 Open Data Attribution
Where we use open data (such as council or government datasets published under Creative Commons licences), we comply with the applicable licence terms. Attribution details are available on request.
8. Prohibited Conduct — Automated Access and Scraping
8.1 Restrictions
You must not, and must not attempt to, directly or indirectly:
- Use any robot, spider, crawler, scraper, or other automated means or software (including but not limited to tools such as Puppeteer, Playwright, Selenium, or similar browser automation frameworks) to access, extract, download, index, or collect any content or data from the Dog Happiness website.
- Reproduce, copy, mirror, frame, or create any database, dataset, directory, or compilation that incorporates any substantial part of the Dog Happiness Venue Database.
- Systematically download, store, or cache venue data, dog access rules, leash classifications, condition notes, or any other structured data from the website, whether manually or through automated means.
- Use any data extracted from the website to train, fine-tune, or otherwise develop any machine learning model, artificial intelligence system, or large language model.
- Circumvent, disable, or interfere with any security, access control, rate limiting, bot detection, or other protective measure implemented on the website.
- Access the website through any means other than the interfaces expressly provided by Dog Happiness for end-user access (that is, a standard web browser operated by a human).
- Use the website’s API endpoints for any purpose other than the normal rendering of the website in a browser, or attempt to reverse-engineer, probe, or exploit any API endpoint.
- Sell, license, sublicense, transfer, distribute, publish, or otherwise make available to any third party any data obtained from the website.
- Use any data from the website to create, contribute to, or operate any competing product, service, or directory of dog-friendly venues or dog access information.
8.2 Scope
The prohibitions in clause 8.1 apply regardless of the technical method used, including but not limited to HTTP requests, headless browsers, browser extensions, screen capture, optical character recognition (OCR), or manual systematic transcription.
8.3 Permitted Automated Access
For clarity, the following automated access is permitted:
- Access by verified search engine crawlers (such as Googlebot and Bingbot) that respect the website’s robots.txt directives.
- Any automated access expressly authorised in writing by Dog Happiness.
9. Data Integrity
Dog Happiness implements technical measures to detect and respond to unauthorised automated access. Where automated or suspicious access is detected, Dog Happiness reserves the right to serve modified, incomplete, or inaccurate data in response to such requests.
Any data obtained through automated means or in violation of these Terms may be unreliable, inaccurate, or deliberately altered. Dog Happiness accepts no liability for any loss, damage, or consequence arising from reliance on data obtained in violation of these Terms.
This clause does not affect the accuracy of data served to legitimate users accessing the website through normal browser-based use as described in clause 8.3 and section 3 above.
10. Monitoring, Enforcement and Remedies
10.1 Monitoring
Dog Happiness reserves the right to monitor access to the website for the purpose of detecting violations of these Terms, including through the use of traffic analysis, bot detection, rate monitoring, and other technical measures.
10.2 Remedies
If Dog Happiness reasonably suspects that you have violated or are violating these Terms, Dog Happiness may, without notice and without limiting any other rights or remedies available at law:
- Immediately block, suspend, or restrict your access to the website.
- Require the immediate deletion or destruction of any data obtained in violation of these Terms.
- Seek injunctive relief, damages (including consequential and economic loss), account of profits, or any other remedy available under Australian law, including under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth).
- Report the conduct to relevant authorities.
- Pursue recovery of its reasonable legal costs and expenses incurred in enforcing these Terms.
10.3 Cumulative Rights
The rights and remedies in this section are cumulative and do not exclude any other rights or remedies available to Dog Happiness at law or in equity.
11. Limitation of Liability
To the maximum extent permitted by Australian law, Dog Happiness, its operators, contributors, and affiliates accept no liability for any loss, damage, cost, or expense (whether direct, indirect, consequential, or otherwise) arising from:
- Reliance on information published on this website.
- Inaccuracies, errors, or omissions in venue information, access status, or any other content.
- Changes to venue policies, council regulations, or access conditions that are not yet reflected on the site.
- Actions taken or not taken based on information on this site.
- User Content submitted by third parties.
- Technical issues, service interruptions, or data loss.
Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any rights you may have under the Australian Consumer Law or any other law where such exclusion is not permitted. Where our liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.
12. Privacy
Dog Happiness collects and handles personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. Details of what personal information is collected, how it is used, and your rights in respect of that information are set out in our Privacy Policy.
Dog Happiness does not sell personal information to third parties.
Where Dog Happiness displays publicly available information sourced from third-party services (such as business listing data from Google Places), that information is displayed in accordance with the applicable terms of use of those services.
13. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms of Use from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page indicates when the most recent changes were made. Continued use of the site after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.
14. Governing Law
These Terms of Use are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. You submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales and any courts that may hear appeals from those courts.
15. Contact
If you have questions about these terms, contact us at contact@doghappiness.com.au.