Terms of service

Top Dog SF Academy (the “Academy”, “we”, “us”) is operated by Top Dog Supply LLC, 2121 Taraval St, San Francisco, CA 94116. These terms apply to topdogsfacademy.com and everything on it — courses, memberships, certifications, workshops, downloads and 1-on-1 sessions.

By creating an account, buying anything, or using the site, you agree to these terms and to our privacy policy and cancellation & refund policies, which form part of this agreement. If you don’t agree, don’t use the Academy.

You must be at least 18 to buy anything or hold an account. The Academy is not directed at children.

You’re responsible for what happens under your account, and for keeping your password private. Tell us promptly at hello@topdogsfacademy.com if you think someone else has access.

Accounts are personal and individual. Don’t share logins, and don’t let anyone else use your access — including colleagues, family or clients. Businesses buying for staff should use team seats, which give each person their own account.

Give us accurate information, and keep your email address current so you can receive receipts, access links and password resets.

One-time courses (for example Puppy Foundations, the Certified Professional Dog Walker certificate, and business bundles) give you access to that course for as long as we operate the Academy. We describe this as “lifetime access”, meaning the lifetime of the product — not a guarantee that any course will exist forever. If we ever retire a course you paid for, we’ll give you reasonable notice and a way to download or keep what you can.

Memberships (the Good Dog Club) are recurring subscriptions giving access to member benefits for as long as the subscription is active. Benefits may change over time; we won’t materially reduce them without notice.

1-on-1 sessions are individually booked video calls with a trainer, subject to the scheduling and cancellation rules on our policies page.

Free material (the Puppy Training Taster, the Business Pillars Workshop, guides and public pages) is provided as-is, and we may change or withdraw it at any time.

Payments are processed by Stripe. We don’t see or store your full card details. Prices are in US dollars and exclude any taxes that may apply to you.

Subscriptions renew automatically — monthly or annually, depending on the plan you chose — until you cancel. You authorize us to charge your payment method on each renewal at the then-current rate for your plan. You can cancel any time from your dashboard.

If a payment fails, we may retry it and may suspend access until it succeeds. We honor your existing rate until you cancel or change plans, and we’ll notify you before any price change takes effect.

Payment plans (such as Klarna or Affirm, where offered) are agreements between you and that provider, on their terms.

Our full, binding refund and cancellation terms — including the 14-day money-back guarantee on one-time courses, subscription cancellation, and the 1-on-1 session rules — are set out on our cancellation & refund policies page, which forms part of these terms.

Where a course issues a certificate, you earn it by meeting the stated requirement (for the Certified Professional Dog Walker, passing each final assessment at 80%). Certificates carry a serial number and are publicly verifiable.

What a certificate is: evidence that you completed our curriculum and were assessed against our standard. What it is not: a government license, a legal qualification, an accreditation by any state or national body, insurance, or permission to operate a business. You are responsible for any licensing, permits, insurance and local laws that apply to your work — including the local rules we summarize for you, which are educational guidance and not legal advice.

Don’t misrepresent what your credential is, alter a certificate, or claim a credential you haven’t earned. We may revoke a certificate obtained by fraud or misrepresentation, or where it is being misrepresented publicly.

This is the most important section on the page. Please read it.

Everything we teach is educational information, not a professional service performed on your dog, and not veterinary or medical advice. We have never met your dog. You know your dog and your situation; you decide what to apply, and you remain fully responsible for your dog’s behavior and safety at all times.

We do not guarantee behavioral outcomes. Dogs are individuals. Results depend on your dog’s history, health, genetics, environment, age and on your own consistency — none of which we control.

Get in-person help for serious behavior. Our online material is not appropriate for aggression, biting, resource guarding with conflict, severe fear or separation distress, or any behavior that could injure a person or animal. For those, work with a qualified professional in person, and consult your veterinarian — behavior changes can have medical causes.

Consult a veterinarian before starting any training if your dog is unwell, injured, recovering, pregnant or elderly. Stop and seek help if your dog shows pain, distress or escalating fear.

You are responsible for supervising interactions between dogs and children, for complying with leash, licensing and nuisance laws where you live, and for any harm your dog causes.

Don’t:

• Share, resell, sublicense, publish or publicly perform our course material
• Download, scrape, record or redistribute our videos, guides or assessments
• Share your account, or use one seat for several people
• Use the Academy to build a competing product, or to train a machine-learning model on our material
• Attempt to bypass payment, access gating, or assessment integrity
• Probe, scan, overload or disrupt the service, or attempt to access other users’ data
• Upload unlawful, abusive or infringing content, or harass our team or other members

We may suspend or close accounts that breach this section.

All course material — videos, written lessons, assessments, guides, illustrations, the curriculum itself, and the Top Dog SF and Top Dog SF Academy names and marks — belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by copyright and trademark law.

When you buy access, we grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to view and use that material for your own learning and your own work with dogs. You may apply what you learn in your business. You may not republish or redistribute the material itself.

Downloadable resources (checklists, toolkits, certificates) are for your own use; the same restrictions apply.

Questions, feedback, forum and chat messages, and anything else you submit stay yours. You grant us a license to use it to run and improve the service — for example, so a trainer can answer your question, or so we can fix a bug you report.

If you give us a testimonial or review, you agree we may publish it with your first name and dog’s name. Tell us at hello@topdogsfacademy.com if you want it taken down.

Don’t send us anything confidential or anything you don’t have the right to share.

Our site assistant is automated. It can be wrong, incomplete or out of date, and it does not create any commitment on our part. Prices, policies and course details on our pages — not the assistant — are authoritative, and nothing it says overrides these terms. For anything that matters, email hello@topdogsfacademy.com and a person will answer. Don’t use it for urgent or serious behavior problems.

We rely on third parties to run the Academy — including Stripe (payments), Cal.com (scheduling), and email and hosting providers. Their handling of your data is described in our privacy policy. Where we link to other sites or recommend products, we don’t control them and aren’t responsible for them.

We aim to keep the Academy available, but we don’t promise uninterrupted service. We may add, change, suspend or withdraw features, and we perform maintenance from time to time.

We improve and update course content regularly — the material you see may differ from when you bought it. That’s normally to your benefit and is included at no extra cost.

Except where the law says otherwise, the Academy and everything in it 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 don’t warrant that the service will be error-free or uninterrupted, that content is complete or current, or that using it will produce any particular result — behavioral, professional or commercial.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Top Dog Supply LLC and its owners, staff and trainers are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost business or lost data, arising from your use of the Academy.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability for any claim relating to the Academy is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Specifically: we are not liable for injury, damage or loss caused by a dog, or arising from how you apply training information. See section 7.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence. Some jurisdictions don’t allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

You agree to indemnify Top Dog Supply LLC against claims, losses and reasonable legal costs arising from your breach of these terms, your misuse of the Academy, your misrepresentation of a credential, or harm caused by a dog in your care.

You can close your account any time by emailing hello@topdogsfacademy.com. Closing your account doesn’t automatically refund anything — refunds follow the policies page.

We may suspend or close your account if you breach these terms, if we’re required to by law, or if we stop operating the Academy. If we close your account without cause, we’ll refund the unused portion of any prepaid period.

Sections that by their nature should survive — content ownership, disclaimers, liability limits, indemnity and governing law — survive termination.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and we agree to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in San Francisco County, California.

Before filing anything, please email hello@topdogsfacademy.com — nearly everything is faster to fix directly, and we’d rather sort it out.

We may update these terms. If a change is material, we’ll give notice by email or on the site before it takes effect. Continuing to use the Academy after that means you accept the updated terms. The effective date at the top always tells you which version is current.

Top Dog Supply LLC
2121 Taraval St, San Francisco, CA 94116
hello@topdogsfacademy.com