Privacy Policy for the Solitude Stables Website

This Privacy Policy explains how Solitude Stables, a family-run horse farm in Harwood, Maryland, handles information when you visit our website or contact us. We keep this simple, because we are a small farm and we treat your information the way we would want ours treated.

Last updated: August 2026.

Information we collect

We only collect the information you choose to give us. When you use our booking or contact form, or email us, you may share details such as your name, email address, the rider's age, riding experience, your preferred days and times, any answers you give in our lesson-finder quiz, and any message you send.

When you submit the booking form, our website also records a little context to help us respond and understand how riders find us: the date and time of your request, the page you submitted it from, and basic marketing attribution (for example, the website that referred you and any campaign details — such as whether you arrived from a search engine, social media or an online ad). We also collect standard, aggregated website-usage information, such as pages viewed, approximate location and device type, through analytics described below.

Our website does not require you to create an account, and we do not ask for sensitive personal information.

How we use your information

We use the information you provide for one purpose: to respond to you and to arrange horseback riding lessons or guided trail rides. Specifically, we use it to:

• Reply to your questions and booking requests
• Plan and confirm lessons and trail rides
• Match riders with a suitable horse and lesson
• Contact you about a ride you have booked

How we share information

We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information, and we never share it with advertisers. We do rely on a few trusted service providers to run the website and manage inquiries — for example Google (Google Workspace, Google Sheets, Google Apps Script and Google Analytics) to receive, store and understand form submissions and site usage, and our web host and email provider to deliver our pages and messages. These providers process information only on our behalf. We will otherwise share information only if we are legally required to do so.

How our contact form works

When you submit our booking form, your details are sent securely over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection to a small Google Apps Script that we control. That script does two things: it emails your request to us at [email protected] so we can reply, and it records your submission (with the timestamp and attribution details noted above) in a private Google Sheet that only we can access. This gives us an organized, secure log of inquiries so nothing gets missed. The form also uses simple anti-spam checks, and it never adds you to a marketing list.

Cookies and analytics

Our website is intentionally light. It does not use advertising cookies and never sells data about your visit. We load Google Fonts so pages display in our chosen typefaces, and we use Google Analytics 4 (delivered through Google Tag Manager) to understand, in aggregate, how visitors use the site — for example which pages are popular and how people find us — so we can keep improving it. These analytics tools may set first-party cookies and collect anonymized usage data; they do not identify you personally. You can opt out at any time using your browser's cookie controls, a tracking blocker, or Google's Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, and we honor Global Privacy Control signals where supported.

Third-party links

Our site links to outside pages, such as our Facebook and Instagram profiles and online maps. Once you follow a link to another website, that site's own privacy policy applies, not ours.

Children's privacy

We love teaching young riders, but our website is intended to be used by parents and guardians, not by children directly. We do not knowingly collect information from children. Please have a parent or guardian make any booking inquiry on a child's behalf.

Keeping your information

We keep booking and inquiry information — including entries in our secure Google Sheet log and copies in our email — only as long as we reasonably need it to serve you and keep good records, and we take sensible care to protect it. You are welcome to ask us to review, update or delete information you have shared, and we will do so promptly unless we are legally required to keep it.

Your choices

You can contact us at any time to ask what information we hold, to correct it, or to ask us to delete it. Simply email [email protected] and we will help.

Changes to this policy

If we update this Privacy Policy, we will revise the date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review it occasionally.

Contact us

If you have any question about privacy or about this policy, please email [email protected]. We are always glad to help, and your trust means a great deal to our small family farm.