Privacy Policy

The controller of your personal data is Stella Maris Kennel, Sofia, Bulgaria. For any question about your data, or to exercise your rights, email us at hello@stellamaris.dog.

When you send us a message through the contact form, we receive the details you enter: first and last name, email address, phone number (optional), the topic of your inquiry and your message. The form also sends the language of the page, the page of our site you came from (or, if you arrived from another website, that website’s address) and, if you asked about a specific litter or puppy, which one, so that we can reply in the right language and about the right puppies.

Name, email and message are required so that we can reply; the phone number is optional.

We use this information only to answer your inquiry, including keeping your place on our puppy waitlist if you ask for one. The legal basis is your request to us, as a step before a possible puppy purchase (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR), and our legitimate interest in answering the messages we receive (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

The form is delivered by Formspree (Formspree, Inc.), which forwards your message to our email inbox and processes it on our behalf on servers in the United States.

If you contact us by email, phone or WhatsApp instead, we use the details you share in the same way. WhatsApp is a Meta service and its own privacy policy applies.

We advertise with Google Ads. Our site loads the Google tag (gtag.js) only if you click “Accept” in the cookie banner. The tag sets advertising cookies such as _gcl_au (kept for up to 90 days) and sends Google information about your visit: the pages you view, whether you contact us, your IP address and browser details. We use this to see which ads lead to visits and inquiries.

The legal basis is your consent (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR and the Bulgarian Electronic Communications Act). If you click “Reject”, or make no choice, the Google tag is not loaded and no advertising cookies are set.

You can change your choice at any time with “Cookie settings” at the bottom of every page. Google processes this data under its own privacy policy; see also how Google uses information from sites that use its services.

Strictly necessary storage: your browser keeps your language choice and your cookie choice (localStorage), and a short-lived technical marker (sessionStorage) that helps the site recover after a failed update. These stay on your device, are not sent to us or anyone else, and do not require consent.

The map showing where our puppies live loads map images from the OpenStreetMap tile servers (tile.openstreetmap.org), run by the OpenStreetMap Foundation; map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. To fetch the images, your browser sends your IP address, the address of the page and standard request details to these servers, and the OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy applies. We rely on our legitimate interest in showing the map (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

This website is hosted on GitHub Pages (GitHub, Inc.). When you visit a GitHub Pages site, GitHub logs your IP address for security purposes (GitHub Pages documentation, GitHub Privacy Statement). This is necessary to deliver and protect the site (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR).

Formspree, Google and GitHub may process data in the United States. Such transfers rely on safeguards recognised under the GDPR, such as the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses or the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider takes part in it.

We keep your messages and contact details for as long as we need them to handle your inquiry and any follow-up, for example while you are on our puppy waitlist. After that we delete them, unless the law requires us to keep them longer. Advertising cookies expire as described above, and you can delete them in your browser at any time.

Under the GDPR you have the right to:

• access your personal data;
• have it corrected;
• have it erased;
• restrict its processing;
• object to processing based on our legitimate interest;
• receive your data in a portable format;
• withdraw your consent at any time, without affecting processing carried out before you withdrew it.

To exercise these rights, email us at hello@stellamaris.dog. We will reply within one month.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Bulgarian supervisory authority, the Commission for Personal Data Protection (CPDP), 2 Prof. Tsvetan Lazarov Blvd., Sofia 1592, www.cpdp.bg, or with the authority in the EU country where you live or work.

We do not sell your personal data and do not make automated decisions about you. If we change how we handle data, we will update this page and the date at the top.