How did Adventure with Dogs Come About?
About us is a bit of a long story.
We had 2 successful small businesses that we had started from the ground up on the Gold Coast for 14 years that were geared to the tourist industry.
In 2020 COVID-19, like for so many of us, destroyed our world that we had built for our family and the wonderful people who worked for us. Our main business closed its doors in 6 weeks and the second smaller business, despite doing all we could, sadly closed 6 months later.
Losing Our Best Mate, Spike
On the 11/06/2021 we unexpectedly and devastatingly lost our much-loved red heeler Spike at 10 years of age. This had a huge impact on Julie particularly, he was her shadow.
Our logo is a nod towards Spike and did you realise, there is another dogs head in the logo? This is another much loved dog Max a Staffordshire Terrier that passed some years ago.
Only 3 months later, Julie brought another 4-legged little mate into the family; Bear the miniature schnauzer was helping mend a broken heart.
The Solution: Adventure with Dogs
Chris being an engineer by trade started thinking of ideas; many prototypes later and the JAXTRAX and PAWTRAX were created for Bear.
We had to do something for an income. So we compiled of list of what we loved and went through each to see if we could start a business. We ended up with 2 things at the top of the list: dogs and camping.
Camping with Dogs was born! The name changed early on to Adventure with Dogs. Bear Gear, you guessed it, is for the smaller dogs and of course is named after our Bear.
Products were sourced, quality, durability, comfort, and function were the primary areas we focused on. What would we find helpful when we were camping, out on a day trip, a walk. Research and development of 9 months, we wanted to have products that were different than what is normally found in the pet shops.
We put just about every cent we had into Adventure with Dogs and come to the conclusion we would need to sell our much-loved home and move to somewhere more affordable so Adventure with Dogs could get off the ground; we needed $’s!
We moved to Beaudesert in Queensland in September 2022 and with this move we were only a half an hour from our eldest daughter, son-in-law, granddaughter and grandson and one hour from our younger daughter and Grandson. This was the best move, we had our family closer and we are enjoying the quieter pace of Beaudesert life. Chris is driving trucks, although super long hours, he loves it. Julie is concentrating on Adventure with Dogs.
We are one year young and of course very new to the market. We love this business, and we believe in each and every product we have; we hope you love them too!
Julie and Chris
“Live the moment with your best mate”