Dog Forbid was built from experience. Gear that's ready when instinct kicks in, holds when it matters and gives dogs the freedom they deserve.
Before we picked him up, Angus had lived in a garden shed with his siblings in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. When we brought him home to live in Manchester City Centre, it was a world he had no concept of, and for a while, he really struggled.
Angus was 5 months when we got him, so we could start his training straight away. We would take him with us everywhere we went because we wanted him to fully acclimatise to this new busy, loud and scary environment. But every time there was a bike, a siren or a bus, Angus would panic, and try with his every effort to get out of his collar so he could get away.
The collars he had as a puppy never fit him quite right, and as his city centre training went on it felt more like a “when” not “if” he manages to slip his head through one.
We found ourselves filling up with the anxiety of what would happen if something spooked him, was he able to get out of his collar and what if the worst happened. But as we became more anxious, so did Angus, and we knew we needed something that was going to give us peace of mind, and keep him safe. We tried a variety of different collars, but nothing ever fit him quite right, and we were never fully happy with anything. So we chose to take what we’d learnt from everything we’d tried so far, and create a collar that was impossible to get out of, but also perfectly comfortable and gave us more control on the lead to help manage and avoid the triggering scenarios.
Anna had always dreamed of having her own dog. She grew up with German Shorthaired Pointers, usually three at a time. Completely obsessed with dogs, she's a dog lover through and through. Tom was the total opposite. As a kid, he was terrified of them, and everything he has learned has come from learning on the go with our own dogs.
Together, we’ve put everything we can into learning as much as possible about how best to care for our two dogs, how to make them feel safe, and give them as many adventures as we possibly can. Dog Forbid was built from us asking one simple question: "What more can we do to give Angus the life he deserves?"
Product innovation for dog safety was lacking, so in 2022 we answered that question ourselves and made our first Martingale collar. The first one wasn’t perfect, and the next 20 plus after that weren’t either. But we were committed to creating gear for Angus that we believed in and that would give us the confidence to safely take him everywhere we go.
