These Terms set out the agreement between you and Petoniki when you use this website. They cover what the site is, what you may and may not do here, how comments work, what you may do with our content, and the limits of our responsibility. By using the site you accept these Terms and our Privacy Policy.
Petoniki publishes this site. In these Terms, "we" and "us" mean the operator responsible for the site, and "the site" means this website and the features it offers.
Effective date: 6 October 2026. Version 1.1.
What this site is
Petoniki publishes general educational information about pets: profiles of breeds and species, guides to care and husbandry, explanations of health conditions, behaviour and training material, and guides to choosing and buying equipment. It is written for people who live with animals, in ten languages.
The site also offers optional features for registered users: a saved-items list, and a pet record you fill in yourself. Using the site to read does not require an account.
Our editorial standards are described on the About Us and Editorial Policy pages, and how we handle product recommendations is set out in our Product Review Policy.
Health content, and what it is not
Health-related articles here explain how a condition commonly presents, what is usually observed first, what typically causes it, which signs mean an animal needs to be seen promptly, and what a veterinarian is likely to consider. They are general guidance.
They are not a diagnosis, not a prescription, not a treatment plan, and never a substitute for an examination by a licensed veterinarian who can see your animal, take its history and, where necessary, run tests. Appropriate diagnosis and treatment depend on the individual animal and on the country or region you live in, because authorised medicines, vaccine schedules, parasite-control products, notifiable-disease rules and accepted clinical practice differ between jurisdictions.
If an animal is unwell, contact a licensed veterinarian or an emergency veterinary hospital in your area. Signs such as difficulty breathing, severe bleeding, suspected poisoning, seizures, collapse or a sudden inability to urinate need prompt professional attention. Do not delay or replace professional care because of something you read here, and do not give or withhold medication, change a dose, or attempt a home treatment because an article described it. Our Medical Disclaimer explains how to read our health content.
Accounts and eligibility
Reading the site requires no account. If you create one, you confirm that the information you give is accurate, that you will keep your password confidential, and that you are old enough to consent to online services on your own where you live; if you are not, a parent or legal guardian must approve your use of the account. We do not set a fixed minimum age of our own.
You are responsible for activity under your account. Tell us promptly at [email protected] if you believe someone else has access to it.
An account exists to save content and preferences. It is optional, and no part of the site requires one.
Registration, email and third-party sign-in
Registration by email requires verification, by a link or a six-digit code sent to your address. You may not register with someone else's email address or with a third-party account that is not yours.
If you choose to sign in through an external provider such as Google, that provider confirms your identity to us and returns an identifier, and limited profile details, so we can create or match your account. The provider's own terms and privacy policy also apply to that sign-in. We do not receive your password for that provider.
Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- break or attempt to break the security of the site, or access areas, accounts or data you are not authorised to access;
- bypass access controls, rate limits or technical protections, or interfere with the site's normal operation;
- copy content at scale by automated means, or run automated access that ignores robots rules, our rate limits or written permission we have given;
- distribute malware, or use the site to send spam or unlawful communications;
- impersonate another person, misrepresent your connection to anyone, or commit fraud;
- use the site in a way that breaks the law or infringes anyone else's rights, including intellectual property and privacy rights;
- upload or post anything unlawful, defamatory, hateful, threatening, obscene, or that reveals another person's personal information without their consent.
Automated access is not forbidden in itself — search engines and research tools are welcome — but it must respect robots rules, rate limits and any written permission we give.
Comments
Some items on the site accept comments; not all of them do. The operator decides which items are open to comments, based on the subject of the item and on what is practical to moderate, and may open or close comments on an item at any time.
Where comments are open, posting one requires a name and an email address. A first comment is held for review before it appears; once a comment has been approved, later comments from the same person are normally published without further review. Comments appear in the order they were posted and may be threaded.
You keep the copyright in what you write. By posting a comment you give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display, format, translate and distribute that comment on the site and in related feeds, and to keep it available for as long as the site publishes the item. You also confirm that you have the right to post it and that it does not infringe anyone's rights.
We may edit a comment for formatting, or remove any comment, without notice, in particular where it is:
- unlawful, defamatory, hateful, harassing, obscene or threatening;
- advertising, spam, or an attempt to promote a product, service or website;
- medical advice presented as a substitute for veterinary care;
- another person's private information, or content you do not have the right to post;
- off-topic, or an attempt to impersonate someone else.
Removing a comment is an editorial decision, not a penalty, and we are not obliged to publish or to keep any comment. If you believe a comment should be reviewed, write to [email protected] with the address of the page.
The site accepts no article submissions, guest posts or reader-written guides. We publish content written by our editorial team only.
Copyright and what you may do with our content
Unless we say otherwise, the text, layout, illustrations, photographs, brand elements and software on this site belong to us or to our licensors.
You may, without asking:
- read, save, quote and share our content for personal, non-commercial use;
- quote a passage in your own work, provided you credit Petoniki and link to the page you took it from;
- republish an article in full, provided you keep the credit and the link, do not change the text, and do not present it as your own work.
You may not, in any case:
- use our content, in whole or in part, for commercial purposes;
- reuse our images, photographs, illustrations or other graphics in any form, including in a modified or cropped version, on another website or in printed or digital material;
- remove or obscure attribution, or imply that we endorse you, your product, your service or your view;
- republish our content in a way that suggests the copy is the original, or operate a mirror of this site;
- use our name, logo or brand elements without our written permission.
If you would like to use our material in a way these rules do not allow, write to [email protected] and ask. We are usually happy to say yes to reasonable requests, including educational use.
Advertising, sponsorship and affiliate links
Advertising funds this site, and advertising runs on it. We also use affiliate links in product guides, which means we may earn a commission if you buy through one; this never changes the price you pay. Sponsored placements and affiliate relationships are labelled where they appear, and advertisers get no approval rights over editorial content.
Our rules for advertising are set out in full in our Advertising Disclosure and Affiliate Disclosure. Products and services you reach through the site are the responsibility of the merchant that supplies them, not ours.
Support payments
You may choose a voluntary one-time payment or monthly support charged once each month through Stripe. Monthly support continues until you cancel it. The amount, currency, frequency and recurring nature of monthly support are shown before you confirm, and confirmation is your express authorisation for the recurring charge.
Support payments are general operating revenue, not charitable donations, and do not buy access, membership, editorial influence or any guaranteed benefit. They are generally non-refundable, except where applicable law requires a refund or where we confirm a duplicate or unauthorised charge. Cancellation stops future monthly charges but does not reverse a completed payment. Support payments are not offered to users located in mainland China. The complete rules are in our Support Policy.
Third-party services
Some parts of the site rely on independent providers: an external sign-in provider if you use one, the email service that sends verification and account messages, any bot protection on the registration form, and the advertising networks that serve advertising. Their own terms and privacy policies apply to their part of the service. We choose providers with care, but we cannot control their availability, content or practices, and we are not responsible for them.
Links to other websites are provided for reference. Following one takes you outside this site, and what you find there is not ours.
Your pet record
A pet record is a feature for your own use. The content you enter belongs to you. It is not a medical document and it does not replace professional records; it is your own notes about an animal you care for, and it carries no clinical authority.
You decide what to enter, whether to keep it, and when to remove it. You can delete any entry, or the whole record, at any time, and deletion is permanent: a deleted record cannot be recovered by you or by us. What is stored, who can see it and how it is protected is described in our Privacy Policy, and the cookies the site sets are listed in our Cookie Policy.
Please do not enter another person's personal information into a pet record, and do not treat a record as a place to keep payment details or other sensitive credentials.
Availability and changes to the service
We work to keep the site available and its content accurate, but we do not promise that every page is complete, free of errors, or reachable at every moment. Pages may be corrected, updated, reorganised, or retired as our content develops.
We may change, suspend or discontinue features — including comments on a particular item, saved items, or the site in another language — for maintenance, security, legal or editorial reasons. Where a change materially affects account holders, we will say so on the site.
Responsibility and its limits
We publish information in good faith and review it as described on our Editorial Policy page. What we cannot do is promise that general information will be right for your particular animal, or that a page will never contain an error.
To the extent the law allows, the site is provided as it is and as it is available, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from your reliance on general content, from a third-party service, or from an interruption outside our reasonable control.
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including any rights you have as a consumer under the law that applies where you live. If a provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
Suspension and termination
We may restrict or terminate an account that breaches these Terms, that threatens the site or other people, or where the law requires us to act. Where it is reasonable to do so, we will tell you why.
You may stop using the site at any time, and you may ask us to delete your account by writing to [email protected] or through the account tools. Deleting your account does not affect your rights in relation to personal information described in the Privacy Policy.
Governing law
These Terms are governed by the law of the operator's location. This does not take away any mandatory rights you have as a consumer under the law of the country or region where you live, and nothing here prevents you from bringing a claim before a competent authority where you live.
If we change these Terms, we will publish the new version on this page with a new effective date. Where a change materially affects your rights, we will say so clearly on the site. Continuing to use the site after an update means you accept the revised Terms.
How to contact us
For anything in these Terms — a question, a permission request about our content, a complaint about a comment, or a problem with your account — write to [email protected].
Operator: Petoniki. Contact: [email protected]. Governing law: the law of the operator's location.