Our Story

An idea is born of necessity.

About Us
Meet Arni
How it all began

About us

We are a small women-owned business based in Houston, TX with a deep-rooted love of German shepherds. Over the last 30 years, we have owned nine shepherds, each with health issues, and fostered many more. They are the inspiration behind every one of our products.

We believe dogs need useful accessories, not just cute ones. Our Mission is to make every large dog comfortable anytime, anywhere, with luxurious hand-crafted products that last years, changing how pet owners think of accessories.

Meet Arni

Arni, the German Shepherd, joined our family on Christmas ’94 and lived to be fifteen years of age. He grew up surrounded by all the children in the neighborhood and played outdoors all day. He equally loved swimming in the sea and running through the snow his entire life. In the last three years of his life, Arni developed lumbosacral disease and arthritis, which impacted his mobility. Unfortunately, one of the treatments damaged his kidneys. Eventually, he also developed incontinence.

He had always been incredibly well-behaved and never had accidents in the house until the incontinence. We could see how embarrassed he felt each time he had an accident, and this is how the idea behind Arni Dog Gears was born!

1994

Arni joins the family

Dec 2008

Let it pee

Arni herniates several spinal disks, which causes spinal nerve damage. The steroid treatment damaged his kidneys. He couldn’t control himself and felt terrible about peeing in the house. Our founder Nina, Arni’s human mom, puts her fashion-design skill into action, and the first version of the Pee Pouch was born!

Oct 2010 – Dec 2015

Celine and Iskar join the pack in Boston

Celine’s back legs are lame, and her new adoptive human mom struggles to find a coat that keeps her hips warm in the cold and windy northeast winters.

Celine and Iskar will be diagnosed with lumbosacral disease in another two years. X-rays would reveal Celine’s lamer hip to also be eroded from arthritis.

May 2017

Allergies

Moving to Houston, TX, would trigger severe skin allergies for the mother-son pair Celine and Iskar. Medicated baths, allergy medication, and special diets, yet their skin would itch, their undercoat would shed, and skin infections would flourish.

July 2017

A bed is born!

The memories of Arni’s spinal damage and hind leg paralysis and Celine’s constant skin infections and progressive lumbosacral disease got our founder (trained as an engineer with a passion for fashion design) thinking of a dog bed that is genuinely comfortable – like human beds – and that can survive nasty skin infections and tons of german shepherd hair (and drool, of course).

So R&D began.

Dec 2018

Roadtest

Iskar and our waterproof therapeutic bed go on a road trip to AZ, UT, and CO in the middle of winter. The bed survives mud, dust, sand, snow, ice, and van living without a washing machine for a month!

The bed passed the tests with flying colors, but Iskar’s deteriorating spine needed protection from the elements. So, we returned home with a mission – to make a genuinely protective coat for large dogs with hip and spine issues!