The DOGPAK Grows: Meet Ares & Athena

Article by Devin Kelly, DOGPAK Founder 

Thunder died in June.

I've been putting off writing this post for months—not because I didn't know what to say, but because I knew exactly what I wanted to say and wasn't ready to say it yet. I'd already written the goodbye—you can read it here—and for a while, that was all I could face the public with. But in private, I navigated my grief through writing. I finished the manuscript for my memoir, A Promise to Thunder, and in doing so, I healed. Thunder had taught me to be strong, to live in the moment, and I used those lessons to get through the long days that followed his death.

He was my best friend for nearly sixteen years. He followed me across 32 countries—through rodeo arenas and BASE exits and border crossings he had no paperwork for, through heartbreak and elevation and the kind of miles that rearrange a person on the inside. He never complained. He never faltered. He just showed up, every single morning, ready to go wherever I was going, certain we'd arrive together.

When he died, DOGPAK slipped to the backburner. I had started this company to honor him—to build something around what he had taught me about adventure, about loyalty, about what it means to move through the world with a good dog by your side. After he was gone, DOGPAK was just a reminder that he wasn't. Every product photo, every post, every draft I opened felt like pressing on a bruise. So I stopped pressing.

I didn't want a new dog. That's important to understand. I had a dog. He was irreplaceable. To the people who told me I'd eventually want another one, I just nodded politely—you don't understand.

Two Puppies Under a Cactus

Then Peggy found out about the puppies.

The story goes like this: a family from Grindelwald was vacationing in Calabria when they found two puppies huddled beneath a cactus for days—a brother and sister, no mother in sight, no owners to claim them. The dogs were five or six weeks old at most, far too young to have been properly weaned. This kindhearted family decided to rescue them, got them vaccinated, and brought them back to Switzerland.

Noble. The problem was they already had three large dogs of their own, and two feral Calabrian puppies the size of bread loaves were more chaos than their household could absorb. They needed help—someone to foster the pups while they found a proper home.

Peggy, of course, wanted to keep them immediately.

I was adamant: no. We were not keeping them. We would foster them. That was the deal.

The Dalmatian Coast Changes Everything

We took them with us on a van trip through Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia. Somewhere on the Dalmatian coast, watching these two ridiculous creatures tumble into the Adriatic for the first time—the boy dashing in headfirst like he owned the sea, his sister hanging back on the shore, suspicious of the whole operation—I started doing math I'd promised myself I wouldn't do. What would our life look like with these two in it? How big will they get?

I think I knew then. I just wasn't ready to say it out loud.

Until a friend inquired about adopting one of them. "Sorry, they're ours," I said—surprising even myself as Peggy turned to me in shock.

Long story short: we adopted them. Two puppies found under a cactus in Calabria, carried back to Switzerland in the arms of strangers who couldn't leave them there, and then somehow, inexplicably, delivered into the Kelly family. We named them Ares and Athena—brother and sister, same as in the myth. Even at three months old, their paws were already bigger than Thunder's ever were.

This Is Not a Redemption Story

I want to be honest about something: Ares and Athena didn't fill the hole Thunder left, and that's not their job. Thunder is not replaced. He's not forgotten. He's still the reason this company exists and the reason my memoir will soon find its way into the world.

But grief, I've come to understand, is not a problem to be solved. It's weather. It moves through. And sometimes, in the middle of it, two puppies show up under a cactus in Calabria and you don't have the heart to say no.

A Different Kind of Life

Some of my hesitation came from realizing I couldn't give them the same wild, muddy life I built for Thunder. Thunder grew up cowboying with me—working farms and ranches, driving cattle, running with heelers and horses. I don't live that life anymore, and part of me thought it would be unfair to raise dogs in a more domestic world. At some point, though, I realized how shortsighted that was. Maybe they don't need Thunder's life. Maybe they just need each other—and the knowledge that someone will always show up, every single morning, ready to go.

It's gotta be better than life under a cactus, at least.

Welcome to the Pack

DOGPAK is back. We're building new things, working on the book, and figuring out what adventure looks like with two dogs who haven't yet been on a motorcycle and are, frankly, not yet to be trusted anywhere near a BASE exit—though they did watch me land from some jumps in Croatia, which is a start.

Thunder would have found them exhausting. He also would have loved them. I'm sure of it.

Welcome to the pack, Ares and Athena.