Outdoor exploration has been a lifelong ardour for Ruffwear founder Patrick Kruse. Whether hiking, biking, flying, or sailing, he’s constantly sought approaches to share these adventures with his dogs companions.
Born in Patrick’s garage, Ruffwear has grown into a international chief in overall performance canine gear. From the start, we’ve been dedicated to innovative ingenuity and sustainable practices, striving to do greater with less and limit our environmental impact.
For 30 years, we’ve got stimulated and more suitable outside adventures for puppies and their human companions. Our ardour for exploration stays as sturdy as ever.

1961
Patrick is born into a pack
This Kruse household photograph is taken three years earlier than Patrick is born. Yet these two dogs, Olin and Rexie, are essential household individuals that Patrick experiences from an early age. Dogs proceed to be crucial household members, instilling in Patrick a deep understanding of the bonds four-legged pals have in our lives.

1973
A signal of things to come…
From a younger age, Patrick and his household hike and backpack in the Sierras. Patrick wishes to deliver his canine Marriah along, so at age 12 he heads to an Army Navy surplus shop looking out for a solution. He finds some bags, which he sews collectively with his mom’s laptop to create his first canine pack.

1977
A one of a kind path
Following his wanderlust, Patrick passes his GED at 16, heads for the Caribbean, and crews on a 72-foot ketch, Taormina. From diving on tropical reefs to experiencing communities in turmoil, Patrick positive factors a broader world perspective. Living earlier than the mast additionally requires ingenuity, and Patrick takes on mechanical repairs, woodworking and sewing, inspiring Ruffwear’s faith in doing extra with less, being creatively resourceful, and constructing items to last.

1982
Island fever
Feeling drawn once more to mountains and rivers, Patrick returns to California. Leaning on capabilities won in the Caribbean, he launches his personal business, Mariner Marine Works. It teaches him the price of being responsive to purchaser needs, which leads to Ruffwear’s customer-centric outlook.

1989
Passion meets profession
From mountain biking to windsurfing, Patrick’s passions take him outside. On a Green River trip, buddies and household introduce him to whitewater kayaking, and Patrick acknowledges that fabric and strategies from different out of doors equipment ought to make for higher kayaking equipment. He sees a want and strives to resolve it by means of beginning every other business: Salamander Paddle Gear.

1992
The spark
During a day mountain biking in California’s Los Padres National Forest, Patrick observes his pal struggling to provide her canine a drink the usage of a plastic bag. Inspiration and want once more converge. If cloth can preserve water out, why can’t it hold water in? Days later, he creates a prototype collapsible bowl. It’s the opening of the 0.33 endeavor: Ruffwear.

1993
A big name is born and a brand created
An deserted junkyard canine observed in downtown LA will become the idea for the Ruffwear logo. Ursula teaches her guardian, Patrick’s buddy Lynne, about responsibility, dedication and unconditional love. Ursula’s story is the concept for Ruffwear’s faith in partnering with groups that guide wonderful adoption campaigns.

1994
Customers lap it up
Patrick brings 15 Ruffwear bowls to the Outdoor Retailer Show and locations them on a desk in the Salamander Paddle Gear booth. The bowls intrigue many, which include an LL Bean client who orders 8,000. Ruffwear places a new product class on the map — out of doors canine gear. This method of bringing canine tools to the outside market in addition nurtures Ruffwear’s spirit of innovation and devotion to following our personal path.

1994
Learning through doing
Working from his garage, Patrick scrambles to preserve up with demand for Ruffwear’s bowl. Industry gamers like Title Nine and Outside journal function Ruffwear, and Patrick does the entirety from designing merchandise to making income to pleasing orders. This learning-by-doing method lets in him to scale up the enterprise whilst persevering with to be Ruffwear’s sole employee.

1997
Road trippin’ and product research
Patrick hits the street to discover and to join with clients at shows, occasions and festivals, logging 40,000 miles in the first 12 months with his canines sidekick Otis. Through listening and observing, new product thoughts are conceived, putting a widespread for Ruffwear’s customer-driven product design.

1998
Growing the pack
Patrick strikes to Bend, Oregon, drawn by way of the area’s mixture of mountains, rivers and desert. It’s an perfect area for an out of doors way of life and to develop an out of doors business. Patrick hires his first employees. Continuing its path of commercial enterprise unusual, Ruffwear reinvests its earnings to develop sustainably alternatively than take on debt. This strategy offers the freedom to take probabilities whilst focusing on ardour and purpose.

2001
Supporting working dogs
After the catastrophic activities of 9/11, a journalist asks a rescue employee what they want most and the reply is “dog boots.” By coordinating with customers, FedEx and Search & Rescue, Ruffwear helps make sure the much-needed materials make it to the search teams. While Ruffwear has helped working puppies in the past, this tournament cements the dedication to helping the wants of working puppies and their handlers.

2007
Supporting wild places
Committed to the want to shield wild locations the place puppies and humans play, Ruffwear joins The Conservation Alliance, presenting an annual contribution and conserving exclusive match sales, with all proceeds going to the organization’s mission to guard public lands. The Ruffwear pack additionally volunteers in The Conservation Alliance’s Backyard Collective, rolling up out of date fence, eliminating invasive weeds and performing different restoration work in the field.

2008
Buried alive and digging it
Patrick attends the Wasatch Backcountry Rescue Dog School at Alta, Utah, to study the desires of avalanche puppies and their handlers. In the following years, Ruffwear turns into the avalanche canine uniform provider of preference for U.S. ski lodges and global teams. Ruffwear’s product improvement group participates at the college to this day, the place they lend a hand, get buried in the snow and obtain precious product insights and feedback. It’s phase of Ruffwear’s core price of designing for function.

2009
Sniffing for science
Ruffwear companions with Conservation Canines, a nonprofit that rescues hard-to-home puppies and applies their excessive electricity and abilities to sniff out scat for scientific lookup and useful resource management. The comments won from these hardworking puppies drives domestic precious insights about designing equipment from a dog’s point of view whilst contributing to maintaining our herbal resources.

2015
Dog’s great friend
Stemming from Ruffwear’s trust in aiding high-quality adoption efforts, Ruffwear joins forces with Best Friends Animal Society to launch the Ruff Adventure Dog Adoption Program. Ruffwear money the adoption and tour costs to join out of doors adventurers with lively human companions, and lives are invariably changed.

2016
Connections constructed to last
What commenced as a one-man keep has grown into 38 committed pack contributors who work challenging and play hard, together. Ruffwear has twice been named one of Outside magazine’s one hundred Best Places to Work, and our products are determined in fifty three countries. We’re dog-devoted, outdoor-oriented humans who love what we do — and it shows.

2017
The experience continues
Through a sustainable strategy to developing our business, Ruffwear is honored to be in a position to supply $50,000 to The Conservation Alliance to hold and shield the locations the place we stay and play. We proceed striving to put our high-quality paw forward, constructing overall performance canine equipment to decorate and encourage exploration for out of doors adventurers and their human companions.

2019
In This Together
Working puppies and their human companions have been phase of Ruffwear’s coronary heart and soul considering that the beginning. In 2019, we targeted on the desires of working puppies and their handlers with the aid of developing the UniFly™ Guide Dog Harness. We realized that having a imaginative and prescient doesn’t imply being capable to see with your eyes.

2020
Working like a dog… from home
Covid-19 made 2020 a 12 months of getting to know to navigate uncharted waters. It was once necessary to have all of us in the proverbial raft collectively to navigate the unknown rapids of a international pandemic. Ruffwear supported our personnel by means of growing higher stability and fostering deep relationships even whilst working remotely.

2021
Navigating the ever-changing river
The new 12 months delivered new challenges for the Ruffwear Pack. Our developing crew got here collectively to reply to grant chain challenges and the moving pandemic landscape. Our sustainability center of attention deepened to consist of accomplishing a hundred percent renewable electrical energy for our U.S. operations. Ruffwear was once nominated as one of REI’s 2020 Vendor Partners of the Year. And in December, we honored Will Blount, Ruffwear President of 20 years, as he stepped away to pursue his subsequent adventure.

2022
New Rapids to Navigate & Learn From
The hyper-growth of 2020-2021 shortly turned-off in early 2022 and uncovered Ruffwear’s want to analyze how to proceed develop in new market conditions. We reviewed how we have been the use of our time and made choices to stop, begin or hold things to do that have been core to taking care of Ruffwear in unsure waters. Even even though the waters had been unsure for Ruffwear, we persevered to make investments deeply in the Pack through extensively increasing advantages and benchmarking compensation in opposition to enterprise requirements for our dimension and industry.

2023
Sustainability stays a core focus
A dedication to lowering have an impact on is woven into the cloth of Ruffwear — we’ve used recycled substances in our packaging from the begin and have been disposing of PFAS for greater than a decade. But in 2023, we met some essential sustainability goals. 80% of revamped designs in the Fall/Winter 2023 launch decreased affect in contrast to their preceding versions, and we hit our inside cut-off date to give up all manufacturing with PFAS-containing substances by using the year’s end.

2024
Celebrating 30 years
Ruffwear celebrated 210 canine years of inspiring canine and human connections outdoors. We continue to be genuine to our roots and will proceed to do so shifting forward, embracing a learn-by-doing mindset, prioritizing sustainability, and committing to innovation, quality, and unleashing possibility.

Our Purpose
At Ruffwear, we envision a world the place Every Dog Is An Explorer.

We are fueled by way of the pursuit of discovery, freedom, challenge, and growth. Driven by way of insatiable curiosity, our pack flourishes on the thrill of forging new paths and uncovering hidden truths, each in the outside and within ourselves.

Our ethos of “Business Unusual” approves us the willingness to take intentional dangers that promote creativity, improve patron relationships, and limit our influence on the planet. Our privately held business enterprise reinvests earnings again into our enterprise to maintain it sustainable and nimble, and we associate with agencies like The Conservation Alliance to assist guard the lands and waterways the place canines and human beings join and thrive.

Our Path
For over 30 years, we’ve got stimulated and more suitable outside adventures for puppies and their human companions. See how a reputedly easy collapsible bowl commenced it all.

Our Pursuit of Better
Since 1994, Ruffwear has mixed innovation, quality, and match to construct gear that enhances out of doors interests for dogs explorers and their human companions.

Based in Bend, Oregon, we are surrounded with the aid of the inspiring landscapes of Central Oregon with trails out our the front door and the Cascade volcanoes simply down the road. From lunchtime rides to weekend summits, the place we name domestic is additionally the remaining playground to take a look at our equipment as we construct it.

Our relationship with working canines brings our trying out to the subsequent level. From mountain snowstorms to city catastrophe zones, working puppies and handlers put our tools thru rigorous checking out in each kind of environment. Their comments on fit, durability, and overall performance helped structure who we are nowadays and the place we’re going next.

Working Dog Partnerships
Working puppies and their human companions have been section of Ruffwear’s coronary heart and soul considering that our beginnings. We stay with the aid of the rule that if working puppies believe their gear, then you can too.

Our Gear Testing Process
Here at Ruffwear, we have excessive standards. Our equipment is designed to be durable, secure, and blissful for your dog, and to beautify their adventures — in no way getting in the way.

Hardware Innovation at Ruffwear
We’re fueled via our wish to continuously decorate the connection between puppies and humans. Since our beginnings, we have strived to create stronger, lighter, and extra intuitive designs, and we have in no way seemed back.

Sustainability at Ruffwear
Our experience of accountability is inextricable from our purpose. Holding ourselves and every different to blame to our work for the company and, by using extension, for the planet is rooted in our ‘why’ of unleashing opportunity for puppies and their humans.

Working Like Dogs
We’re an adventurous and curious Pack pushed via a ardour for the canine-human connection. We work – and of course, play – like puppies to domesticate a world the place all puppies and their human companions thrive in the outside and unleash a lifestyles of discovery.

As lifelong explorers, we accept as true with awesome tools is like the bond between dogs and human—forever unwavering. That’s why we push ahead day in and day out to bring up their out of doors experiences collectively with long-lasting, solution-focused gear.

Behind the Scenes, Beneath the Snow
Follow alongside as Ruffwear Pack individuals Mark and Alex attend Wasatch Backcountry Rescue’s Avy Dog training.

Dani & Vilas Running Guide
Learn how to run with your canine with professional hints from Pack member Dani and her pup Vilas.

Pack Picks for Winter Gear
Get straightforward, no-bones-about-it recommendation on iciness canine equipment from the Ruffwear Pack.