The collar started with Tiffany.

She is our golden retriever.

For years I ran a company, and two children at home on top of that. Most of the day somebody needs something, and my head keeps running long after I close the laptop. All that time, a walk with Tiffany was my medicine. Phone in my pocket, the pace set by her. She goes ahead and turns around now and then to check I am coming too. It is our hour, hers and mine.

Then one day she was odd. Slower, quieter, as if she were taking a day off.

We went to the vet more for peace of mind. A few hours later he was operating on her — he had to remove her uterus. Her life was in danger.

We noticed it by a hair. The difference between “she is a bit quiet today” and “we are going right now” rested on one impression of mine. I believe that if she had been wearing something on her neck that counts how much she moved and how she slept, we would have been there a day earlier.

After fifteen years I handed the running of the company over to a colleague. Suddenly there was time to stop and think about what comes next. One rule came out of it: whatever I start has to make sense inside the thing I sell. Every single order has to help by itself.

With the collar I can say that concretely. A dog gets more room, because their person lets them off the lead more calmly. That person knows how the dog slept and how much they moved today. And the vet gets numbers alongside the sentence “she was somehow odd”.

Hikes are long walks. For us, any walk where the dog gets more freedom counts as one. And Hike! is what mushers call to get the sled team going.

Tiffany is fine today and we go on the same walks as before. The first collar we put together will be hers.