Terms of Service

Last updated: August 31, 2026 (version 2026-08-31)

Welcome to Parallel.Pet. These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and [Company Name] (“we,” “us,” or “Parallel.Pet”) covering your use of the Parallel.Pet website, mobile web app, and related services (together, the “Service”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into a binding contract to use Parallel.Pet. You must provide accurate account information, and you are responsible for keeping your login credentials secure. You are responsible for all activity on your account.

2. What Parallel.Pet is (and isn’t)

Parallel.Pet helps dog owners discover other dog owners nearby, arrange playdates and group walks, exchange messages, work through our training material, and leave reviews after meeting in person. We are a platform that connects people — we are not a veterinary service, a pet-care licensing body, a boarding facility, a training provider, or a background-check provider. Information users provide about themselves and their dogs (including vaccination, neuter status, and temperament) is self-reported and not verified by us.

3. Meeting in person is at your own risk

Any playdate, walk, or other in-person interaction you arrange through Parallel.Pet happens between you, the other owner, and your dogs. You are solely responsible for evaluating whether another user or dog is a safe match for yours, for supervising your dog at all times, for complying with local leash laws and vaccination requirements, and for any injury or damage that occurs during a meetup. We strongly recommend meeting in public places for first encounters and confirming vaccination and health status directly with the other owner.

Dogs are animals, and animals are unpredictable. No amount of care, screening, or preparation — by you, by another owner, or by us — can prevent every injury, accident, or loss. By using Parallel.Pet to arrange or attend an in-person meetup, you knowingly and voluntarily accept and assume all risks associated with it, including but not limited to: injury to you, to your dog, to your family members, to anyone else who attends with you, and to other people and dogs present; damage to property; the risk that your own dog injures another person or animal; disease transmission between animals; and the ordinary hazards of the parks, trails, streets, and private places where meetups happen.

You agree to hold Parallel.Pet harmless for any and all harm caused by your dog, whether during a meetup arranged through the Service or at any time afterward. This section is intended to shift the risk of arranging and attending meetups to you, and to be as expansive, broad, and inclusive as California law permits.

4. Trainers, boarders, and other professionals

Parallel.Pet may help you find, contact, or book professionals — trainers, behaviorists, walkers, sitters, boarders, groomers, and similar — including professionals affiliated with us or our founders. Any arrangement you make with one of them is a direct agreement between you and that professional. They set their own prices, cancellation terms, and policies, and they will typically ask you to sign their own contract, waiver, or release. That document governs the services they provide, not these Terms.

We are not a party to that agreement, we do not supervise or control how those services are performed, and listing, recommending, or enabling a booking with a professional is not an endorsement, certification, or guarantee of their qualifications, insurance, licensing, or results. Confirm credentials and insurance directly with them, and read what they ask you to sign.

5. Training content

Parallel.Pet publishes training material — written modules, protocols, video, and narration, including the Parallel Walk Protocol. It is general educational content offered for your own personal, non-commercial use with your own dogs.

Results are not guaranteed. The elimination or modification of any behavior depends on your dog, your handling, and circumstances outside our control. Following our material may not produce the outcome you want, and failing to follow professional advice can make behavior or training problems worse or lead to injury. For a dog with known behavioral challenges — reactivity, fear, aggression, or a bite history — work with a certified, experienced professional in person rather than relying on this material alone.

This is not veterinary or medical advice. We do not diagnose or treat medical or behavioral conditions and do not recommend treatments, medications, or nutrition. Talk to your veterinarian before starting any training program, and about anything that might have a medical cause.

Our training material, and everything else we create for the Service — text, video, graphics, curricula, summaries, software, and the Parallel.Pet name and logo — is our intellectual property or that of our licensors. We grant you a personal, revocable, non-transferable license to use it for your own dogs. You may not copy, redistribute, publish, resell, or use it to train other people’s dogs commercially, or share your access with anyone else, without our prior written consent.

If we ever record a training session, event, or call you take part in, we will ask for your consent first, and we will ask again before using that recording for any educational or promotional purpose.

6. Your content

You retain ownership of the photos, videos, profile text, messages, and other content you post to the Service (“Your Content”). By posting Your Content, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, and transmit it solely for the purpose of operating and improving the Service. This license ends when you delete the content or your account, except that we may retain copies as required by law or for reasonable backup and safety purposes.

You represent that you have the rights to share Your Content and that it does not violate anyone else’s rights.

7. Acceptable use and community rules

Parallel.Pet is a community, and using it means agreeing to follow our community rules. The rules in this section — together with any additional community guidelines, safety rules, or policies we publish in the Service — are the community rules, and they apply everywhere on Parallel.Pet: profiles, photos, messages, events, reviews, and in-person meetups you arrange through the Service. We may update the community rules from time to time, and the version in effect when you use the Service is the one that applies to you.

The community rules

1. Be honest about your dog. Describe temperament, reactivity, bite history, size, energy, vaccination, and neuter status accurately — including the parts that make a match less likely. Someone is using what you wrote to decide whether their dog is safe next to yours.
2. Be honest about yourself. Use your real name and current photos, keep one account, and only list dogs that are actually in your care.
3. Put the dogs first. Never push an introduction that isn’t working. Ask for more distance, take a break, or end the session early — and never make someone feel they have to keep going.
4. Assume positive intent. Stay patient, empathetic, and compassionate with the dogs and with each other. Ask whether someone wants feedback before you give it, and keep it kind when you do.
5. Respect a no. If someone declines a meetup, cancels, stops replying, blocks you, or asks you not to contact them, that is the end of it. Don’t press, don’t find another way to reach them, and don’t show up anyway.
6. Show up, or say you can’t. Cancel as early as you can when plans change. Repeatedly leaving people waiting at a park is a rules violation, not just bad manners.
7. Keep it about the dogs. Parallel.Pet is not a dating app and not a marketplace. No romantic or sexual advances toward someone who hasn’t invited them, and no soliciting.
8. Ask before you post someone else. Get permission before sharing photos or videos of another person, their dog, or their home, and never republish someone’s private messages or precise location.
9. Follow the law wherever you meet. Leash laws, vaccination requirements, park and trail rules, and cleaning up after your dog are all on you.
10. Speak up when something is wrong. Report unsafe handling, aggression, or behavior that made you uncomfortable. You can report without the other person being told, and reporting in good faith will never count against you.

Prohibited conduct

You also agree not to:

• Post false or misleading information, including about your dog’s temperament, vaccination, or health.
• Harass, threaten, or harm other users, their pets, or any animal.
• Use the Service to sell, breed, or rehome dogs (unless we explicitly enable such features).
• Post sexual, violent, or otherwise unlawful content, or content that infringes someone else’s rights.
• Impersonate another person, create accounts for dogs you do not own, or operate multiple accounts to evade blocks or bans.
• Scrape, crawl, or copy data from the Service, or attempt to interfere with its operation or security.
• Use the Service for any commercial purpose without our prior written consent.

8. Reports, blocks, and enforcement

You can block other users and report content or behavior that violates these Terms. We may review reports, remove content, suspend features, or terminate accounts at our discretion, with or without notice. Severe violations (threats, abuse, illegal content) may result in immediate termination.

We may suspend or permanently remove you from Parallel.Pet if we determine that you have broken the community rules, harassed or mistreated another person or animal, or otherwise made the community less safe or welcoming. We decide what counts as harassment or a rules violation, in our sole discretion and based on our own judgment of the conduct and its effect on others — you do not need to have broken a law, and the conduct does not have to have happened on the Service if it arises out of a connection you made through it. We may act on a single incident or on a pattern of behavior, we may act without notice, and we may remove your content, revoke any badges or certifications, and block you from creating a new account. Attempting to evade a removal — for example, by making another account — is itself a violation of these Terms.

Removal is not a punishment we take lightly, and we will generally tell you when we take action on your account. If you think we got it wrong, email hello@parallel.pet and we will take another look, though we are not obligated to reinstate an account.

9. Account termination

You may delete your account at any time from the settings page. When you delete your account, we soft-delete your profile and your dogs’ profiles so that historical records (for example, past messages or reviews with other users) remain intact for the other party. We may retain limited information as described in our Privacy Policy.

10. Paid features

Parallel.Pet is currently free. In the future we may offer paid features (for example, boarding-related tools). If we do, we will present the pricing and any additional terms before you are charged, and paid features will be governed by the then-current Terms.

Fees a professional charges you for their own services are theirs, not ours, and their payment, deposit, and cancellation terms — including any charge for a late cancellation or a missed appointment — are set out in their agreement with you, as described in section 4 above.

11. Disclaimers

The Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of harmful components, or that any information about other users or their dogs is accurate.

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Parallel.Pet and its officers, employees, and affiliates will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of data, profits, or goodwill, arising from your use of the Service or any in-person interaction that resulted from it. Our total liability for any claim arising out of these Terms will not exceed one hundred U.S. dollars ($100) or the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim, whichever is greater.

13. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Parallel.Pet and its officers, employees, agents, and affiliates from any and all claims, liability, damage, loss, cost, or expense (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of your use of the Service, Your Content, your interactions with other users, your violation of these Terms, or your violation of any law or the rights of a third party.

This includes any claim of injury to any person, animal, or property caused by your dog — whether the dog is in your care, in someone else’s, or acting as a result of following training material or instructions provided through the Service. You understand that owning a dog carries inherent risks, including damage to property, self-injurious behavior, and conduct that draws complaints from others, and those risks remain yours.

14. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we will notify you through the Service or by email, and we may require you to re-accept the updated Terms before continuing to use Parallel.Pet. Your continued use after the effective date of the updated Terms means you accept them.

15. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and Parallel.Pet agree that any dispute will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in San Francisco County, California, and each party consents to personal jurisdiction there.

16. General

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the community rules and our Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service, and supersede any earlier understanding on the subject. An agreement you sign directly with a professional you found through Parallel.Pet is separate, and these Terms do not modify it.

No waiver. No waiver or modification of any provision of these Terms is valid unless we agree to it in writing. If we do not enforce a provision on one occasion, that is not a waiver of that provision or any other, and not a waiver of the same provision on another occasion.

Severability. Every provision here is intended to be severable. If a court of competent jurisdiction holds any provision illegal, invalid, or unenforceable, that provision may be modified by the court to give effect to the intent of the parties and enforced as modified, and the remaining provisions stay in full force and effect.

Assignment. You may not transfer or assign these Terms or your account. We may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of our assets.

17. Contact

Questions about these Terms? Email us at hello@parallel.pet.