Why I Founded Chicago Adventure Pack: Giving Dogs the Best Life Possible

There is a very simple idea at the heart of Chicago Adventure Pack, one that existed long before there was a business, a van full of dogs, a website, employees, Adventure Days, or even the thought that I could somehow turn something I loved this much into my actual job: if we are fortunate enough to share our lives with dogs, I think we have a responsibility to give them the best life we possibly can.

For me, that has never meant simply keeping a dog safe, fed, walked and loved, important as all of those things obviously are, because I have always thought there was something more that we could give them, something that comes from recognizing that dogs experience this incredibly short life through movement and smell and play and friendship and novelty, through putting their paws somewhere they have never been before, jumping into Lake Michigan on a summer morning, running through a forest, sticking their nose into seemingly every plant along a trail, chasing another dog through the mud, collapsing into the grass after miles of hiking, and eventually falling asleep at home in that unmistakable way a dog does when you know they have experienced a truly great day.

That philosophy really started with my own dogs.

I adopted Sylvia from PAWS Chicago in 2017, Parker from PAWS Chicago in 2018, and then Layla joined our family last year through I Heart Dogs Rescue, and some of the happiest and most meaningful memories of my life have come from simply trying to show them as much of the world as I possibly can. We have explored state parks throughout Michigan, gone hiking together in Boulder, Colorado, spent countless early mornings walking along Lake Michigan and running around the dog beach, gone swimming, wandered through forests, explored new trails and neighborhoods and places simply because we had never been there before, and taken three-hour treks through freezing winter weather when almost every reasonable person would probably prefer to stay inside, because I know how much being outside and exploring means to them.

There are plenty of mornings when I am tired, or it is cold, or raining, or muddy, or I have a thousand other things that would be easier to do, but then I look at them waiting by the door and realize that, from their perspective, this isn't an inconvenience at all. This might be the best part of their day.

And their days matter.

Their lives matter.

One of the strange and painful things about loving a dog is knowing from almost the very beginning that we are probably going to outlive them, and that realization has increasingly made me think not only about how deeply we love our dogs, but about what that love actually asks of us while they are here. Sylvia has now been with me for nine years, and as she gets older I find myself thinking more and more about time, about how finite all of this is, and about the fact that someday I would give almost anything for one more ordinary walk with her. So while I still have those walks, I want to take them. While she can still explore, I want her to explore. While Parker can investigate every smell in Chicago and Layla can run around like the fluffy lunatic that she is, I want to give them every opportunity to do it.

Life is an adventure, and I think it is meant to be explored.

That belief is ultimately what led me to Chicago Adventure Pack.

For years, whenever I needed care for my own dogs, I struggled with the traditional options that were available to me, particularly when I lived in Michigan, because although there are many wonderful daycare facilities and many dogs genuinely enjoy them, I kept thinking about what my dogs actually wanted their days to look like, and I knew that for Sylvia and Parker especially, spending eight hours in a crowded indoor daycare was never going to be their version of the perfect day.

I remember one experience in Michigan particularly clearly. I went to visit my dogs in the middle of the day at a facility where they were staying, only to discover that the facility essentially shut down for several hours and the dogs were placed into kennels during that time. I understand why facilities have schedules, why dogs need rest, why staffing and safety require structure, and I don't think there was anything malicious about it, but seeing my dogs sitting in kennels in the middle of what I imagined was supposed to be their exciting day away from home genuinely broke my heart.

I kept thinking: there has to be something different.

What if, instead of bringing dogs somewhere and asking them to spend the day inside a building, we brought them somewhere because of everything waiting for them outside of it?

What if daycare meant getting into a van in Chicago in the morning and ending up on a trail surrounded by trees, or beside a lake, or running through a field, or swimming, or hiking for miles with the same group of friends they see every week? What if the goal was not merely to occupy their time until their owners came home, but to fill that time with as much enrichment and movement and curiosity and joy as we reasonably could?

Last year I finally decided to try to build that.

I started Chicago Adventure Pack around the simple concept of taking a group of well-socialized dogs and trying to give them the best Adventure Day possible, and while the business has evolved tremendously since those first outings, that basic idea has never changed. We pick the dogs up in the morning, leave the city, and spend the day exploring trails, forest preserves, open spaces, beaches and water, hiking and running and swimming and sniffing and playing, sometimes covering ten miles in a day, sometimes coming home completely covered in mud, sometimes spending an absurd amount of time throwing the same tennis ball because apparently there is nothing more important happening anywhere in the universe.

And I love it.

I love watching friendships develop between dogs who see each other every week. I love watching one dog start running and suddenly five others decide there is now apparently a race. I love watching dogs swim who were originally apprehensive about the water, dogs become more confident in new environments, and dogs who might find a traditional daycare stressful settle beautifully into the rhythm of being outside with a familiar pack. I love the moment after several miles of hiking when everybody finally lies down together, tired and muddy and happy, and there is this brief period of complete peace before someone inevitably finds a stick, a squirrel or another reason to start everything again.

Part of my inspiration came from watching Chad at Bark and Burn and seeing what he was doing with a pack of 20 or 25 dogs in New York, because the first time I really understood what he had built, I remember thinking that someone had somehow created a profession out of exactly the thing I already wanted to spend my life doing. There was something incredibly compelling to me about taking dogs outside together, building relationships with them over time, creating this community around the pack and making their happiness the entire point of the business, and somewhere along the way the thought changed from that looks like an amazing job to why couldn't I build my own version of this in Chicago?

And so I did.

Adventure Days are not meant as an indictment of traditional daycare, because some dogs thrive in daycare and there are excellent facilities throughout Chicago, but they are intentionally something very different. A traditional daycare generally brings dogs into an environment designed for dogs; Adventure Days bring dogs out into an enormous environment that already belongs to them too.

The smells change. The terrain changes. The weather changes. The places change. Some days there is water, some days there is mud, some days there are miles of wooded trails, and occasionally Mother Nature decides to throw virtually everything she has at us in the same afternoon. The dogs have to navigate the world, interact with one another, listen, explore, rest, move again, and experience a kind of physical and mental stimulation that is very difficult to reproduce inside four walls.

When I drop them home after one of those days and watch a dog slowly walk inside, find the nearest comfortable surface and collapse into sleep, I know exactly what that feeling means because I have watched Sylvia, Parker and Layla do the same thing hundreds of times.

They had a full day.

They experienced something.

They lived.

And ultimately that is what Chicago Adventure Pack is about for me. It isn't really about how many miles we hike, how muddy everybody gets, how many dogs fit into the van or how many Adventure Days we eventually grow to offer each week. Those are all pieces of the business, but the reason underneath all of it is much simpler and much more personal.

Dogs give us this extraordinary form of companionship that is almost impossible to adequately describe, they become woven into our routines and our homes and our memories until imagining life without them becomes almost impossible, and yet their time with us is painfully short. We cannot change that fact, but we can decide what we do with the time we are given.

I want Sylvia's life to have been filled with adventure.

I want Parker's life to have been filled with adventure.

I want Layla's life to be filled with adventure.

And now, every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday when I look around and see a pack of dogs running through the woods together, swimming, exploring, getting filthy, making friends and experiencing places they never would have experienced otherwise, I realize that somehow I get the opportunity to help give that kind of life to other people's dogs too.

There are easier jobs.

There are certainly cleaner jobs.

There are jobs that do not involve waking up early, driving across Chicago, walking ten miles, cleaning mud out of a van, navigating thunderstorms, carrying gallons of water, figuring out twelve different pickup instructions and eventually spending hours returning everybody safely home.

But I can't think of many jobs I would rather have.

Because the dream behind Chicago Adventure Pack has always been incredibly simple:

Give dogs the best life possible, while we are lucky enough to have them here.

There is an enormous world outside waiting for them.

We might as well go explore it.

Every Day Is an Adventure.