Most pet brands begin with a gap in the market. Wolf Republic began with a bag that disintegrated.
Brittney Richards and her husband had just adopted their first dog, Ralphie, when someone gave them a dog backpack as a gift. They are hikers, the kind of people who plan a weekend around a trailhead, and the idea of their new dog carrying his own kit was instantly irresistible. He would not just come along. He would have a job.
The bag did not survive the enthusiasm. So they went shopping, and found a market that was, in a word, dispiriting: loud colors, cartoonish prints, an unreasonable quantity of paw-print motifs, and construction that suggested nobody involved had ever walked more than a mile. They bought another one anyway, because the point was Ralphie, not aesthetics.
It fell apart after two weeks.
That is the whole origin story, and it’s a better one than most, because everything the brand later became is a direct answer to those two weeks.
The prototype was designed on a hike
The Richardses did what a certain kind of person does when a product fails them twice: they started redesigning it in their heads. Out loud. On a hike, which is where the design conversation for a hiking product should probably always happen.
They built a prototype. They liked it enough to photograph it and put it on Instagram, on an account with a couple of thousand followers and no real audience to speak of.
The post got over 30,000 likes.
That was 2018, and it was the moment Wolf Republic became a company rather than a project. Today the account sits north of 45,000 followers, and that first prototype grew up into the Ranger Pack, the brand’s signature product and still its best seller.
Richards credits some of that speed to the marketing careers she and her husband came from. But the thing that made it stick was more basic. The gear works.
The design brief is unusually boring, on purpose
Ask Richards what Wolf Republic optimizes for and you get an answer that would fail a marketing brainstorm: strong, safe, durable, then design. In that order. They build things they’d personally use, for the dog they actually have. Richards has described the whole line as designed around Ralphie, and admits the products are made a little selfishly, with the couple’s own hiking trips in mind.
Which produces the second, quietly radical part of the philosophy: the brand refuses to run on a seasonal cycle. No collections, no drops, no annual refresh designed to make last year’s pack look old. Richards has been explicit that waste is the thing she’s designing against, and that the goal is a product a customer never has to replace. Timelessness, in her framing, is a durability spec rather than an aesthetic one.
For a pet industry that has enthusiastically imported fast fashion’s entire playbook, that is close to heresy, and it is the single most persuasive thing about the brand.
The line has since expanded from that one bag into leashes, collars, camping bowls, and rope toys built to survive an actual dog. All of it descends from Ralphie, and all of it is designed around the same question: will this still be usable in three years?
The Ranger Pack
Wolf Republic Ranger Pack — $96, all sizes
The waxed-canvas-and-leather saddlebag that started the company. Four sizes, and notably the price does not climb with the size, which is a small kindness that most brands do not extend.
What it gets right: it looks like a piece of luggage rather than a piece of pet gear, which is the entire reason people buy it. Canvas takes abuse and takes on character rather than fraying into embarrassment. The construction is the point, and it holds.
Who it’s for: day hikers with a fit, adult, medium-to-large dog who genuinely likes having a job. It’s a carry-your-own-water-and-snacks pack, not a multi-day expedition system.
Who it isn’t for: anyone hoping to offload serious weight. And that brings us to the part that nobody selling dog backpacks likes to lead with.
The honest caveat
A dog backpack is not automatically good for a dog, and the internet has done a poor job of saying so.
Weight. The widely used rule of thumb is that a healthy, conditioned adult dog can carry somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of its body weight, and most trainers and vets recommend starting far nearer the bottom of that range than the top. Ten percent is a sensible ceiling for a normal pet dog on a normal day hike. Twenty-five percent is for genuinely conditioned working dogs, and treating it as a target rather than an outer limit is how dogs get hurt.
Age. A puppy should not carry a loaded pack. Growth plates typically close somewhere between 12 and 18 months, later in large and giant breeds, and loading a skeleton that hasn’t finished assembling itself is a bad trade for a cute photo. Introduce an empty pack early, by all means. Add weight later.
Build. Flat-faced breeds, dogs with existing joint disease, dogs carrying extra weight of their own, and dogs with any orthopedic history should be cleared by a vet before they carry anything at all.
Fit. A pack that shifts, chafes, or sits on the shoulders rather than distributing across the back is worse than no pack. Load it evenly on both sides. Check under it at every break.
Start empty. Then a bit of water. Build up over weeks, not over one Saturday.
None of this is a knock on the gear. It’s what should come with the gear.
What Richards would tell a first-timer
Her advice for pet parents who want to start hiking with a dog is refreshingly unglamorous.
Prepare properly: bring far more water than you think you need, a collapsible bowl to serve it in, and poop bags, because a trail is not an exemption.
And then the part she rates most highly, which is not gear at all: find people. The adventure-dog community, she says, is one of the most generous corners of the internet, and it is full of people who will simply invite you along. Join a group that’s already doing it. Take an easy trail first. Build up.
It’s the same advice she’d give about the pack, really. Start light, go often, and let the dog set the pace.
What’s new since this was written
Wolf Republic is still here, which in a category littered with brands that lasted one product cycle is worth stating plainly. The company is still trading out of LA, still selling the Ranger Pack as its lead product, and still not running seasonal collections.
The Ranger Pack currently runs $96 across every size, and it’s now available on Amazon as well as direct from the brand, which is useful if you’d rather not wait on a small-batch shipment.
The broader trend that the founders spotted has also held. The post-pandemic rush outdoors did not reverse; hiking and camping participation stayed elevated, and the adventure-dog category has grown accordingly, which means there is now considerably more competition for the Ranger Pack than there was in 2018. Most of it is cheaper. Very little of it is built to still be around in 2031, which was always the argument.
References
- Wolf Republic. “Ranger Pack | Dog Backpack.” https://www.wolfrepublic.com/products/ranger-dog-backpack
- American Kennel Club. “Hiking with Dogs: What to Bring and How to Prepare.” https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/sports/hiking-with-dogs/
- Zink, C., and J. B. Van Dyke, editors. Canine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation. 2nd ed., Wiley-Blackwell, 2018.
- Von Pfeil, D. J. F., and C. E. DeCamp. “The Epiphyseal Plate: Physiology, Anatomy, and Trauma.” Compendium on Continuing Education for the Practising Veterinarian, vol. 31, no. 8, 2009. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19866445/
- Outdoor Industry Association. “Outdoor Participation Trends Report.” https://outdoorindustry.org/resource/2024-outdoor-participation-trends-report/
