Terms, privacy & accessibility

This manual is offered free, as general education. In plain language: use it at your own risk, we collect nothing about you, and we try to make it usable by everyone. The details follow. Last updated October 12, 2026.

1. Terms of use and disclaimer

By using this site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

Educational content only

Everything here is general information, written for hobbyists and self-taught beginners. It is not professional, veterinary, behavioral, medical, legal, financial or safety advice, and it is not a substitute for the judgment of a qualified professional for your specific situation. Dogs, households and situations vary; results will differ from what is described. Nothing here diagnoses or treats a medical or behavioral condition in your dog.

Personalized content

The "Your dog" boxes, calendar, dates and calculator are generated automatically from what you type into the setup form, using general rules of thumb. They are planning estimates, not guarantees. Check every number against your own dog's records and your veterinarian's advice.

Safety

• Bites. If a dog bites a person and breaks the skin, wash the wound with soap and water, see a physician, and ask your local animal control office what must be reported. Stop training until a veterinarian and a behavior professional have seen the dog.
• Growling and guarding. A growl is a warning, not a problem to correct. If your dog growls, snaps, stiffens over food or objects, or has ever bitten, use management (gates, leashes, separate rooms) and contact a veterinarian, then a veterinary behaviorist or a credentialed behavior consultant. This manual does not teach protocols for aggression.
• Children. Never leave a child alone with a dog, any dog. Supervise actively, keep children away from a dog that is eating, chewing, sleeping or in its crate, and do not allow hugging, climbing or face-to-face greetings.
• Methods and equipment. This manual does not use or instruct choke, prong or shock collars, leash corrections, alpha rolls or any method that works by pain, fear or startle. The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior recommends only reward-based methods and states that aversive methods carry risks to welfare and can worsen behavior.
• Leashes and long lines. Use a long line only in open space away from roads, never tied to a person or a child, never on a head halter, and check that your leash and harness are fastened before every walk. Where a dog may be off leash is set by local rules; ask your city or county.
• Heat and cold. In hot weather walk in the cooler hours, keep off hot pavement, carry water, and treat heavy panting, drooling, unsteadiness or collapse as an emergency. Never leave a dog in a parked car. In cold weather shorten walks for small, short-coated, young, old and ill dogs.
• Treats and food. Treats count as food. Keep them to about a tenth of the day's calories, use part of the daily ration as training food, and never use grapes, raisins, chocolate, onions, garlic, macadamia nuts, alcohol or anything sweetened with xylitol, including some nut butters. If your dog eats something that worries you, call your veterinarian or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center (888-426-4435; a fee may apply).
• Crates. A crate is a bed, not a punishment. Never crate a dog that panics in one, never leave a dog crated for longer than it can hold its bladder or than the guidance for its age, and remove collars with tags or loops before crating.
• Health first. A sudden change in behavior, accidents in a house-trained dog, straining, blood, drinking more, or a dog that will not eat is a veterinary question first. Training does not treat illness or pain.
• Puppies and vaccines. Before your puppy's vaccine series is complete, ask your veterinarian which places are safe to visit. Socialization still happens; the places change.
• Dog introductions. Introduce dogs to each other on leash in neutral space with slack leashes, feed them apart, and separate them when you cannot watch.
• Local rules. Leash, licensing, rabies vaccination, bite-reporting and dangerous-dog rules are set by your state, county and city, and they take precedence over anything on this site. We do not give legal advice.

Third-party links and products

The site links to tutorials, suppliers, books and other resources we found useful. We do not control those sites, do not endorse or guarantee anything on them, receive no payment or commission from them, and are not responsible for their content, availability, accuracy or practices. Product and brand names mentioned belong to their respective owners and are used only to identify them.

No warranty; limitation of liability

The site and its content are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Field Assembly LLC, Reassembly and the people who made this site are not liable for any loss, injury or damage, direct or indirect, arising from your use of the site or reliance on its content. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of this may not apply to you.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute arising from the site or these terms will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Massachusetts, and you consent to their jurisdiction.

Changes and availability

We may change, pause or remove the site or any part of it at any time without notice. We have no obligation to keep it available or up to date.

2. Privacy

Short version: this site does not collect, store or sell any information about you. If you choose to email us, we receive your address and your message.

• No accounts, no sign-up. You never need to give us an email address to use the pages. There is nothing to join.
• No analytics, no tracking, no advertising, no cookies. The site sets no cookies and includes no third-party scripts, pixels or embedded content. Fonts are served from this site, not from a font service.
• Your setup stays on your device. What you type into the setup form, and the progress checkboxes, are saved only in your browser's local storage so the site can show them back to you. They are never transmitted to us. Clearing your browser data, or using the "Clear my setup" button, deletes them.
• Share links contain your setup. The "copy a link" feature encodes your answers into the web address itself so you can open them on another device or send them to a helper. Anyone who has that link can see those answers. Do not put anything in the setup form that you would not want in a link you share.
• If you email us, we use your address only to reply, and we do not add it to any list.
• Hosting logs. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which, like any web host, processes technical request data (such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested) to deliver the site and protect it from abuse, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not use that data to identify or track visitors.
• Links to other sites take you to services with their own privacy practices.
• Children. The site is not directed at children under 13 and we knowingly collect no information from anyone.

3. Accessibility

We want this manual to be usable by everyone, including people who use screen readers, keyboards, magnification or high contrast. The site is built to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA. Specifically:

• Semantic HTML with headings, landmarks, lists and tables with header rows; a "skip to content" link; visible keyboard focus on every control.
• Every form field has a label; checkboxes and radio buttons are labeled; the menu button reports its state.
• Text and interface colors meet contrast minimums in both light and dark modes; information is never conveyed by color alone.
• Text resizes with browser settings; layouts reflow to narrow screens; no content flashes or moves on its own.
• Diagrams have text descriptions; icons in the navigation are decorative and accompanied by text.

Known limitations: wide reference tables scroll horizontally on small screens, and printable pages depend on your browser's print settings. If anything on this site is hard for you to use, please tell us through fieldassembly.net and we will try to fix it.

4. Copyright and sharing

© 2026 Field Assembly LLC. The text, structure and code of this manual are copyrighted. You are welcome to use the manual for your own dog, share the link freely, print pages for personal use, and quote short passages with attribution. Please do not republish the manual or substantial parts of it, sell it, or present it as your own. Linked third-party material belongs to its respective owners. The self-hosted fonts (Cormorant Garamond and Inter) are used under the SIL Open Font License.

Built by Reassembly for Field Assembly LLC.