Privacy

What we store

If you save a rescue with the heart button, that list lives in your own browser's local storage. We never hold a copy — there's no server here to hold one. Clear your browser data and it's gone. Open the site on a different device and you'll start fresh, which is the trade-off for not making you sign up for anything.

One thing to be straight about: analytics does count each save and unsave as it happens, including the rescue's name. So we can see that Pet Haven got saved 40 times this month. We can't see your list, or tie those saves to each other or to you.

What we don't do

There are no accounts, so nothing here is tied to a profile of you. We don't sell data. We don't ask you to log in to browse, and we don't ask for anything at all unless you message us first.

When you message us

Whether you use the form on the contact page or just email us directly, your message lands in the same place: a help desk called Chatwoot that Skybrant runs on its own server. Not a third-party inbox we rent, and not somewhere your details get resold.

What's in there is what you sent — your name, your email address, your phone number if you gave us one, and what you wrote. We keep it so we can follow the thread if you write again, and so we're not asking you to explain yourself twice. Ask us to delete it and we will.

We won't add you to a mailing list off the back of a message. If that ever changes, it'll be a checkbox you tick, not a default.

The form runs one spam check before it sends — Cloudflare Turnstile, which watches how the page behaves rather than making you pick out crosswalks. It doesn't follow you around the internet.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics, and we'd rather spell out what that means here than leave you guessing. Alongside the usual page views, we record a handful of things people do on the site:

• What you type into the rescue search box. Just the words, once you've stopped typing, and whether anything came back. It's the most useful thing we get — a search that finds nothing tells us to go write something or add a rescue.
• Which filters you pick — city, focus, that sort of thing — and how many results you got.
• Links you follow off the site, like a rescue's own website, a donate button, or a public record on ProPublica. We see which link and from which page, not who clicked it.
• Rescues you save or unsave with the heart, by name. The list itself stays in your browser — but the fact that someone saved a particular rescue does reach us, and that's how we know which listings people come back for.
• How far down an article you read, and when you click "show more" on a long list.
• Pages that didn't exist, so we can fix the link or set up a redirect.

What we don't collect: anything that identifies you. No names, no email addresses, nothing typed into the contact form. If your browser sends a "Do Not Track" signal, analytics doesn't load at all.

Advertising

The site is ad-supported. Ads work the way they do everywhere: your browser talks to the ad network directly, and it may set its own cookies. Advertisers get no say in which rescues we list or what we write about them.

Cookies

First visit, you'll get a small bar at the bottom of the page asking about cookies for analytics and advertising. Pick either answer and it goes away and stays away. Ignore it and nothing bad happens — it doesn't cover the page and it won't nag you.

Here's what Decline actually does, because a lot of sites are vague about this. You still see ads. They're just untargeted ones, picked from the page you're on instead of from anything about you, and no advertising cookie gets set. Analytics goes cookieless too, so we still get a rough sense of which pages people read and lose the ability to tell a returning reader from a new one. We'd rather say that plainly than imply Decline turns the ads off.

Your saved rescues are never part of this. The heart button writes to your own browser and nowhere else, you asked for it by clicking it, and a question about tracking has no business wiping a list you built. Decline and your favorites are exactly where you left them.

Changed your mind? Right now the honest answer is that there's no settings screen for it yet — clear this site's data in your browser and the bar comes back on your next visit, ready for a different answer. A proper toggle is on the list.

Links out

We link to rescue organizations, their social pages, and public records on ProPublica. Once you follow a link you're on someone else's site under their privacy policy, not ours.

Questions

Ask us — the contact page is the fastest way. If you want something on this site changed or removed, say so and we'll sort it out.

Last updated August 19, 2026.