LE EPITOME KENNELS LIMITED
PRIVACY STATEMENT
Last updated: 16 August 2026
Le Epitome Kennels Limited (“LEK”, “we”, “us” or “our”) respects your privacy and handles personal information in accordance with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. This statement explains how we collect, use, disclose, store and protect personal information when you use our website, make an enquiry, apply to our waiting list, purchase or receive a puppy, communicate with us, or otherwise interact with LEK.
1. WHO WE ARE
Le Epitome Kennels Limited is a New Zealand dog breeding business based in Waikato.
Privacy Officer: Privacy Officer, Le Epitome Kennels Limited
Email: info@leepitomekennels.co.nz
Phone: +64 21 966299
Registered office: c/o Rosalind Rassie, 195 Universal Drive, Henderson, Auckland 0610, New Zealand
2. WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT
Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect:
• Identity and contact information, including your name, address, email address, phone number, country and region.
• Puppy enquiry and preference information, including preferred breed, sex, coat type, colour, timing and collection preferences.
• Waiting-list and suitability information, including household type, whether children or other pets live in the home, dog ownership experience, work hours or likely time a puppy would be alone, property ownership or rental status, fencing, feeding preferences, budget readiness, and acknowledgements relevant to our placement process.
• Customer, transaction and contract information, including reservation or waiting-list status, puppy allocation, agreements, invoices, payments, collection or transport arrangements, and information needed to provide ongoing support.
• Communications and relationship records, including emails, messages, telephone notes, enquiries, follow-ups and internal CRM notes relevant to your application or customer relationship.
• Marketing preferences, including whether you have consented to receive general LEK updates, litter announcements or other marketing communications.
• Website and technical information, which may include IP address, approximate location, browser, device, network information, referring website, pages visited, clicks, timestamps, cookie preferences and other website activity.
• Advertising-attribution information, including UTM campaign parameters and advertising click identifiers such as Meta’s fbclid where they are present in a website URL.
• Information from other sources where reasonably necessary for verification, security, fraud or abuse prevention, dispute management, or protecting the integrity of our application process. This may include information from service providers, communications platforms, payment records and publicly available sources.
If you provide information about another person, including a household member or child, please provide only information that is reasonably relevant and that you are authorised to provide. Our application process is intended for adults, and we do not need children’s names or unnecessary identifying information for ordinary suitability assessment.
3. WHY WE COLLECT AND USE PERSONAL INFORMATION
We may use personal information to:
• respond to enquiries and communicate with prospective and existing customers;
• assess waiting-list applications and suitability for a particular puppy or for our breeding programme;
• manage waiting-list status, puppy matching, allocation, contracts, payments, transport, collection and handover;
• provide customer support and maintain records relating to puppies placed by LEK;
• protect animal welfare, customer safety, our staff and household, our website, our systems and the integrity of our application process;
• prevent, identify and investigate suspected fraud, abusive behaviour, duplicate or misleading applications, security incidents or other misuse;
• maintain internal business, governance, accounting, tax, legal, evidential and compliance records;
• understand website traffic and usage, troubleshoot problems and improve our website and enquiry process;
• measure advertising performance, understand which campaigns or referrals generate enquiries and applications, and improve marketing efficiency;
• send marketing communications where you have consented or where otherwise permitted by law;
• establish, exercise or defend legal rights, resolve complaints or disputes, and enforce agreements; and
• comply with legal and regulatory obligations.
Most information you provide to us is voluntary. However, if you do not provide information reasonably required to assess an application, verify important details, enter into an agreement, process a payment, arrange handover or meet legal requirements, we may be unable to process your application or provide the relevant service.
4. APPLICANT SUITABILITY AND INTERNAL ASSESSMENT
LEK carefully assesses prospective homes. We may use internal criteria, checklists, scoring tools and CRM status fields to help organise and assess application information.
These tools support our decision-making; final application and puppy-placement decisions are made by LEK personnel rather than solely by an automated system.
Joining a waiting list, submitting an application or providing information does not itself guarantee acceptance, allocation of a puppy, a particular litter, colour, sex, coat type or timeframe.
5. WEBSITE ANALYTICS, COOKIES AND ACTIVITY LOGGING
Our website is hosted by Squarespace. Squarespace and connected services may use cookies and similar technologies that are necessary for the website to function and, where permitted, for analytics and marketing.
We use a cookie banner and privacy controls to give visitors choices about non-essential cookies. Where our consent controls apply, non-essential cookies are restricted until the visitor makes the relevant choice. Some embedded or third-party services may operate under their own cookie settings and privacy practices.
We may keep Squarespace Activity Log data enabled for legitimate business purposes including website security, fraud and abuse prevention, troubleshooting, application-integrity checks and internal analytics.
This may include technical information such as IP address, approximate location, browser or device information, referrer and pages visited.
6. META PIXEL AND ADVERTISING MEASUREMENT
We use the Meta Pixel on our website to help us measure website activity and advertising performance, understand whether advertising leads to website visits and enquiries, and improve our advertising.
When the Meta Pixel is active, Meta may receive website event and technical information associated with a visit, such as page or URL information, timestamps, browser or device information, network or IP information, cookie or identifier data, and advertising or referral information.
Meta processes information it receives through its Business Tools in accordance with its own terms and privacy policies.
At the date of this statement, LEK does not intentionally send the contents of waiting-list application answers to Meta through the Meta Pixel. Our embedded waiting-list form is managed separately through Fillout and Airtable.
7. CAMPAIGN AND APPLICATION ATTRIBUTION
Where you arrive at our website through an advertisement, search result, social-media link or other campaign, the website URL may contain attribution values such as:
utm_source
utm_medium
utm_campaign
utm_content
utm_term
fbclid
Our embedded Fillout waiting-list form may inherit these values from the website URL and pass them into the corresponding Airtable applicant record.
We use this information internally to understand where applications came from, compare marketing performance and improve advertising decisions.
Advertising-attribution information does not by itself determine whether an applicant is suitable for a puppy.
8. FORMS, CRM AND SERVICE PROVIDERS
We use third-party service providers to operate parts of our business. These may include:
• Squarespace for website hosting and website analytics;
• Fillout for embedded application forms;
• Airtable for applicant and customer relationship management;
• Meta for advertising, measurement and website-event analytics;
• Google Workspace for business email, documents and related business records; and
• other providers used for accounting, payments, professional advice, communications, transport or operational services where relevant.
Fillout form submissions are integrated with Airtable so that application information is recorded in our applicant CRM.
Some service providers may process or store information outside New Zealand, including in the United States or other countries.
Where a transfer or disclosure of personal information outside New Zealand is subject to Information Privacy Principle 12, we take reasonable steps to ensure the information is protected by appropriate safeguards, or otherwise handle the transfer as permitted by law.
9. WHO WE MAY DISCLOSE PERSONAL INFORMATION TO
We may disclose personal information where reasonably necessary to:
• LEK directors, authorised personnel or contractors who need the information for their work;
• service providers that host, process, store or support information or systems on our behalf;
• veterinarians, animal transport providers, insurers, registries or other puppy-related service providers where this is necessary for an agreed service or you have authorised the arrangement;
• accountants, lawyers, insurers, IT/security providers, debt-recovery providers or other professional advisers where reasonably necessary;
• Police, regulators, courts, tribunals or other public authorities where disclosure is authorised or required by law, or where lawful disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect rights, safety or property; and
• another person or entity where you have authorised us to disclose the information.
We do not sell or rent customer or applicant personal information to third parties.
10. SECURITY
We take reasonable administrative, technical and physical steps to protect personal information against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure.
These measures may include access controls, account security, restricted permissions, backups and use of reputable service providers.
No internet, email or cloud system can be guaranteed to be completely secure.
If we become aware of a privacy breach that meets the notification threshold under the Privacy Act 2020, we will take the steps required by law.
11. RETENTION
We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably required for the purposes for which it may lawfully be used.
Different records may be kept for different periods. For example, customer, contract, payment, accounting, tax, warranty, dispute or legal records may need to be retained longer than short-term website activity data.
Attribution information stored with an applicant or customer record may remain with that record while it is reasonably required for marketing analysis, record integrity or related lawful business purposes.
When information is no longer reasonably required, we may delete, anonymise or securely dispose of it, subject to legal obligations and normal backup-retention cycles.
12. MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
If you choose to receive general LEK updates, litter announcements or marketing emails, we may use your contact details for that purpose.
You can withdraw from marketing communications at any time by using an unsubscribe option where provided or by contacting us.
Withdrawing from marketing does not prevent us from sending communications that are reasonably necessary to respond to an enquiry, manage an application, administer an agreement, arrange a puppy handover, provide customer support or meet legal obligations.
13. ACCESS AND CORRECTION
You have rights under the Privacy Act 2020 to ask whether we hold personal information about you, request access to that information, and ask us to correct information that is inaccurate, incomplete, out of date or misleading.
To make an access or correction request, contact:
Privacy Officer
Le Epitome Kennels Limited
Email: admin@leepitomekennels.co.nz
We may need to verify your identity before providing access or making a correction. Legal exceptions may apply in limited circumstances.
14. PRIVACY QUESTIONS AND COMPLAINTS
If you have a privacy question or concern, please contact our Privacy Officer first so we can investigate and respond.
You also have the right to contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner in New Zealand if you believe your privacy rights have been breached.
15. CHANGES TO THIS STATEMENT
We may update this Privacy Statement when our systems, business processes, service providers or legal obligations change.
The current version will be published on our website with its last-updated date.