Terms and conditions

Caballus Volunteer Alerts is operated by Rob Heckart for one horse rescue in Maryland. It sends a text message in two situations, and no others, ever:

• a shift you could work is short of people, so somebody free can pick it up; and
• rescue news that will not keep until you next open the application.

Everything else — your sign-in code, the evening staffing summary, and reports raised on a shift — goes by email. A real emergency is a phone call, not a text.

There is no public sign-up and no way to join by texting a keyword. A Volunteer Coordinator at the rescue creates your record from your name, your email address and — if you give one — your mobile number, and asks you at that moment whether Caballus may text you. Your answer is stored against your record with the date you gave it.

You must be a volunteer at the rescue to use Caballus. When you stop being one, your account is revoked and the texts stop with it.

• Frequency. Message frequency varies and is low — a handful in a normal month, and often none. The application will not send more than 120 messages in any twenty-four hours across the whole roster.
• Cost. Message and data rates may apply. Caballus charges you nothing for them.
• Help. Reply HELP to any message, or write to rob@heckart.me.
• Stopping. Reply STOP to any message and the texts stop. Signing in still works — your sign-in code is not part of this programme, so stopping the texts never locks you out of the application.
• Starting again. Text START to the same number — your carrier decides, not us — then ask a Volunteer Coordinator, or clear it yourself under your own details once signed in.

Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages, and neither are we. Delivery depends on your carrier, your handset and your signal, and none of the three is ours. Do not rely on a text arriving: the shift roster, the announcements and everything else a text mentions are in the application, which is where they stay true.

There are no read receipts and nobody is told twice. If a shift is short and nobody picks it up, nobody saw it.

• Your sign-in code is yours. Do not pass it on, and do not let somebody else use your account — what you record is credited to you.
• What you write about a horse or a shift is a record the rescue keeps. Records are added to rather than erased, and changes carry your name.
• Record what actually happened. A checklist ticked for work nobody did is worse than an empty one, because a horse is on the other end of it.

Caballus is provided as it is, with no warranty of any kind. It is a small project run by one person for one rescue, and it can be unavailable, wrong or interrupted. It is not a substitute for a vet, and it is not an emergency service.

To the extent the law allows, the operator is not liable for any loss arising from using it or from a message that did not arrive.

These terms can change; the date at the top changes with them. What we do with your details is in the privacy policy.

Write to rob@heckart.me about the messages, your record, or anything else here.