Make the most of bad situations, take opportunities and realise your dreams.
By: Gareth Morris
Tags: Adventure, Eco Friendly, Startup, Dogs, Business

Hey! I’m Gareth and here’s my story.

Dogs have always been a big part of my life and so has the outdoors.

From Rinty our chocolate Labrador pulling me along in my pram before I could even walk, Tess the Border Collie being my first football (soccer for the Americans out there) buddy and playing with me out in the field, Megan and Sasha the golden labs having adventures in the woods at my grandparents, getting big slobbery kisses from Boddington the St Bernard my grandma had (who at one point had 9 dogs in her house) to Pepa the best and the smartest family Collie I’ve ever met (she never walked on the leash and her recall was impeccable). I loved adventure, hiking and getting out in nature (I was a Cub Scout until I was 15 “dib, dib”).

It was now 2019, I was 31 years old, I had a small family of my own and at the centre of that was our dog Bert. Getting out on hikes and going on adventures and getting lost out on the trails was still a big part of my life. I was very happy but I wasn’t totally fulfilled and was definitely having a 1/3 life crisis.

I wanted my life to have a purpose, to follow a passion and to do something that would have a more meaningful impact than just the day to day. I wanted something to be proud of.

My everyday included running a business that I wasn’t passionate about and that took up a lot of my time. Plus I was getting married the year after so I couldn’t just give up my business or life in pursuit of something else.

To make things worse I had no idea what purpose my life could have or how I could have any sort of profound personal impact.

Fast forward to the start of 2020 and I was still stuck in this merry-go-round of a business that served nothing other than taking me away from precious time with my family and Bert (and also by this point Benji), a long for my life to mean something more and confusion over how to make a profound impact.

Then Coronavirus struck. It basically wiped out my entire business in one swoop. As sad and stressful as that was it was completely out of my hands and I could get back to doing the things I loved (within reason).

One day whilst out on a local trail with Bert and I came across a dog poo bin that was overflowing with plastic dog poo bags. They were spilling out on the floor everywhere, it was awful.

As I looked around at the natural beauty around me this ghastly thing stuck out like a sore thumb.

I looked at Bert and thought “if he had the choice he wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t want to be ruining this idilic trail with mounds of plastic waste”.

As soon as I got home I started researching and quickly found out exactly how much damage me as a dog owner does and has done to the planet. How much damage I was doing to the exact same environments that I loved and loved to share with Bert.

I knew it’s not what he would want and I knew something had to be done.

My plan was to try and become a zero waste dog owner with my dog and for my dog.

I knew going completely zero waste day to day would be nearly impossible but if I could make my dog the hero I knew it would be what he would want.

I looked in to the various eco friendly dog products on the market and there were very few and far between.

They weren’t the easiest to find and there was also a lot of miss information on the environmental impact of some of them.

That’s when EcoWolf was born.

I brought together all the very best eco friendly dog products to one easily accessible place where dog owners could relax knowing that the research had been done for them.

They didn’t have to spend hours searching the internet worrying about their dogs impact on the planet anymore and they could be out enjoying the hills and trials that they both love to share.

Throughout the whole journey I had been looking for a purpose and when I started EcoWolf I realised that my purpose didn’t have to be about me.

I found my passion and purpose in doing what’s right by my dog.

In protecting the environments we love to share and giving back to those environments for the happiness they’ve brought to us.

I wanted to do Bert, Benji, Tess, Pepa and their wolf ancestors proud by trying to minimise their global impact that had been created by us humans.

That’s when our movement to plant 100 million new trees through the profits made by EcoWolf was realised.

Now I want to invite the owners of every hill climbing, trail hiking, ocean swimming adventure dog to help us turn our dogs in to the Planet Saving Super Hero they truly are a heart.

If you want to join the movement hit me up on socials @planetsavingdogs