I spent 10 years
staring at screens.
Rocky fixed that.

I'm a software engineer. I've spent a decade writing code for a tech company in Denver — which means I sit in front of a laptop for eight hours a day, solve abstract problems, and rarely interact with anything that isn't a screen. It's good work. I'm not complaining. But by Friday afternoon, something in my brain starts looking for an exit.

I adopted Rocky in March 2022 from the Denver Dumb Friends League. He was ten months old, 52 pounds, and had already been returned once because he was "too energetic." Looking back, that should have been a warning. At the time, I thought it was a selling point.

Our first camping trip was May 2022, Chatfield State Park, just south of Denver. I had borrowed a tent from a coworker, grabbed a random sleeping bag from REI, and packed Rocky's food in a Ziploc bag. He was ecstatic. I was completely unprepared.

By hour two, Rocky had tangled himself in the tent lines, drunk half my water supply, and attracted enough attention from neighboring campers that I genuinely considered packing up and going home. He was too hot. I had no cooling vest, no proper water bowl, no plan for a 65-pound Lab at Colorado altitude. The sleeping bag I'd grabbed didn't have enough insulation for mountain nights. We both survived. Barely.

We drove back to Denver the next morning, sunburned and exhausted — and I immediately started researching better gear.

That's where the engineer brain kicked in. I don't buy things casually. I read every review, compare every spec, and make spreadsheets about product tradeoffs. Within six months, I had tested more dog camping gear than I care to admit. Some of it was excellent. A lot of it was overpriced and underwhelming. A surprising amount of the gear that popular blogs called "best" turned out to be mediocre once Rocky actually used it on a real trail.

I started writing things down for myself — notes on what worked, what didn't, what was worth the money. Friends who hike with their dogs started asking me for recommendations. I sent them my notes. They found them more useful than anything they'd read online.

DogTrailGear.com is what I wish had existed when Rocky and I started. No fluff, no filler, no gear that got a glowing review because someone got paid to say nice things about it. Just honest, detailed reviews from someone who's actually put in the miles — with a very opinionated 65-pound Lab as the final judge.