Some businesses start with a spreadsheet. This one started with a coincidence too on-the-nose to script. Back in 2006, Bethany Obrecht had her rescue Chihuahua, Walter, out for a walk on Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue when she crossed paths with another woman doing exactly the same thing, walking a rescue Chihuahua who also answered to Walter. It was the kind of moment that feels like the universe leaving a note. The two decided not to ignore it, and out of that chance meeting came Found My Animal, a company built on a single idea: that a beautifully made pet accessory could double as a walking advertisement for adoption.
Nearly two decades later, Obrecht runs the brand, and the mission those two Walters sparked hasn’t drifted an inch.
A leash designed to start a conversation
The genius of Found My Animal was never really the leash. It was the strategy behind it. Obrecht understood that advocacy only happens if someone strikes up a conversation, and conversations only happen if the thing on your dog is interesting enough to ask about. So the debut product, still the brand’s bestseller, was engineered to turn heads: a rope leash of three domestically spun strands, hand-whipped and spliced, finished with a pair of O-rings that let it be worn and adjusted several different ways.
The point was to make something genuinely wearable, an object that read as a fashion accessory rather than pet gear, so that a stranger on a New York sidewalk would compliment it, and the owner could answer with a version of, thanks, it’s Found My Animal, they’re all about adoption, I rescued my dog, you should try it too. It worked. The signature leash landed on daytime television, including The Martha Stewart Show and The Kelly Clarkson Show, and even walked a runway in a Nicholas K show. Not bad for something first made by hand in an apartment.
Every piece the brand makes still carries a stamped “FOUND” patch, which has become its signature. The word is meant to capture the strange, mutual quality of adopting a rescue, the sense that it’s never entirely clear who found whom.
From apartment to international shelves
Obrecht estimates that more than 300,000 of those leashes have sold to date. Over fifteen-plus years the catalog has grown well beyond the original rope, adding bowls, toys, collars, harnesses, and clothing, and the brand has collaborated with the likes of Justin Theroux and, on the retail side, Petco. Products now ship internationally, reaching customers from Japan to Australia.
What hasn’t changed is how they’re made. Operations have moved from Brooklyn to a warehouse in Kingston, New York, but the manufacturing philosophy is the same one Obrecht used when she was splicing rope at home, just scaled up, with a team of skilled makers she’s trained on each step of the process.
Giving back before it was expected
A portion of every sale goes to rescue organizations and animal welfare groups. That’s fairly standard in the pet industry now, but it wasn’t when Found My Animal started doing it in the early 2000s, and the brand was genuinely ahead of the curve. Its website keeps a running page of adoptable shelter dogs, and it regularly amplifies calls to adopt on social media, using its reach as part of the product, not a side project.
What’s new
The advocacy has gotten more literal lately. Found My Animal invested in a Ford Transit van and began running rescue road trips, partnering with a rescue in Florida to physically transport homeless dogs north to new homes in the New York City area. In roughly a year, the van has covered something on the order of 100,000 miles moving animals toward adoption, turning a leash company into, part of the time, an actual rescue-transport operation. It’s a fitting evolution for a brand that decided from day one that selling things and saving animals could be the same act.
