How We Test Our Gear

Here at Ruffwear, we have high standards. Our gear is designed to be durable, secure, and comfortable for your dog, and to enhance their adventures — never getting in the way. Every piece of material plays a critical role in creating a product that you can depend on, from leash clips to a complete joring system.

Maintaining these standards of excellence means constantly evaluating how our gear performs — and it all starts with testing. Read on to learn more about our testing process and how it shapes the final products that your dog uses every day.

Step one: Third-party lab testing

You don’t just have to take our word for it. We send our finished materials to an accredited third-party lab, where they undergo the highest level of scrutiny. By starting with materials — think buckles, webbing, and fabrics — we’re able to ensure that even the smallest parts of the whole are performing exactly as they’re supposed to.

Take our fabrics, for example. Every one that we intend to use for harnesses, life jackets, collars, leashes, and more — is sent as a sample that undergoes multiple tests. One is abrasion testing, where the sample is mechanically rubbed against abrasive materials for prolonged periods. This determines the durability of the fabric’s weave and composition, ensuring that it can withstand brush, rocks, and other elements that your dog encounters on your adventures together.

Our fabrics also undergo tear testing, or measuring the force it would take to rip a given fabric sample, to ensure a high threshold. Finally, they’re subjected to color stability tests to ensure that your gear’s bright hues won’t fade due to everyday factors like sunlight, washing, and rubbing.

Step two: In-house testing

After the third-party testing comes the fun part — or the one when we get our hands dirty. Ruffwear headquarters in Bend, OR, is fully outfitted with an in-house product testing facility, where we put our finished products to the test. Or, as our founder Patrick Kruse puts it, “We break things here.”

The same components that were just tested on an individual basis are reevaluated as a finished product. This can look like pull testing to determine the breaking point of a harness handle, by pulling at it from different angles until the tension causes a rupture. This gives us valuable insights like a design’s breaking points, puncture strength, and stretchability and elasticity. Next, drop testing allows us to ensure that that same harness handle will hold your dog’s weight if it’s dropped from a certain height. And cycle testing allows us to see the durability of parts like attachment points when they’re repeatedly bent or twisted at a given angle over a prolonged period.

The bottom line? Our gear undergoes rigorous in-house testing before it ever makes it onto an actual dog. And there’s still one final step to ensure the highest quality control before it ever hits the shelves.

Step three: Field testing

All of our products are rigorously field-tested — by real dogs getting after it. This is done through our partnerships with working dogs, including service dogs, guide dogs, avalanche rescue teams, and conservation detectors.

We’re lucky to partner with working canines because we know that they’ll put our gear through the paces. They work in demanding environments that require the highest caliber of performance gear, and sometimes, that means the gear they’re testing breaks. But when gear fails in the field, we use those learnings to iterate and improve so that it doesn’t fail during everyday use. This testing partnership allows us to create a product that meets working dogs’ standards — one that we know is going to stand up to your dog’s needs, too.