From a Colorado dog owner’s drawing to a family of pet brands.

Outward Hound is the trading name of Kyjen, a dog and cat products company based in Centennial, Colorado, outside Denver. The Denver weekly Westword reported in June 2013 that Kyjen was founded in Centennial by Kyle Hansen, and that the company had taken shape sixteen years earlier, when Hansen drew a dog backpack on a paper napkin and turned it into the first design. Hansen took his dogs everywhere, the paper wrote, and wanted products that were not being offered.

By 2013, Westword said, the company made more than a hundred toys and products for dogs, and kept about a dozen office dogs on hand to test them. Hansen explained the split between the company name and the line that would later become its public face: “Our entire Outward Hound product line is inspired by our own outdoor adventures,” he told the paper, listing dog backpacks, life jackets, portable bowls and leash accessories. He named the places where the gear was tried out, from the Great Sand Dunes and the Colorado Trail to Union Reservoir and Boulder Creek.

Ownership changed twice in the following years. PE Professional reported in December 2017 that the private equity firm The Riverside Company had acquired Kyjen, doing business as Outward Hound, in August 2013, and had now sold it to J.W. Childs Associates, with Hansen keeping a significant stake alongside the new owner. On 9 July 2026, in a release datelined Centennial and distributed by PR Newswire, Outward Hound announced that funds affiliated with H.I.G. Capital had assumed majority ownership. The release quoted the chief executive, Jared Mosher, who said the new backing gave the company “greater flexibility to invest behind our brands, accelerate product innovation, and pursue growth opportunities”; it also quoted Vivek Jain, a managing director at H.I.G., and did not disclose terms.

Toys with names, a gear line with a landscape, and a house of brands.

The company has long given its products names that describe what they do. In the 2013 Westword interview Hansen singled out the Invincibles, plush toys built around a squeaker meant to keep squeaking even when punctured, and described Bottle Buddies, which wrap an empty plastic water bottle in a plush sleeve, an idea he said came from watching the office dogs chew on bottles. He also mentioned the Hide-A-Squirrel and the Squawkie Talkie. The design team, he said, took ideas from its own dogs, from children’s toys and from customers.

In 2013 Outward Hound was still a product line beneath the Kyjen company name, and Hansen tied it directly to the outdoors in Colorado, which he called an amazingly dog-friendly state. PE Professional’s 2017 deal report listed the brand’s products as pet toys and accessories including travel gear, games and life jackets.

Under Riverside the company became a house of brands. PE Professional listed four add-on acquisitions: Bionic Pet Products of Ladera Ranch, California, in January 2015; Zoo Active Products AB of Karlskoga, Sweden, in September 2015; Petstages of Northbrook, Illinois, in October 2015; and Dublin Dog of Madison, North Carolina, in November 2016. Those add-ons, the report said, also took the company into products for cats. The Swedish deal brought the puzzle games of the designer Nina Ottosson. PET worldwide reported in September 2015 that the acquisition marked Outward Hound’s move into Europe, with a new distribution centre in the Netherlands and an EU office to be run by Ottosson and her team.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all dog toy and accessory names: Outward Hound, FURminator, flexi, Nylabone, Benebone, Rogz and EzyDog. Brands like these sit at many different points in the pet trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s idea to names that now belong to much larger pet-products groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a supermarket aisle to an independent pet shop.

A dog toy or accessory brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a name, a shape and a colour on a hang-tag or a box, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its toys, leads and tools are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging and marks have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

One gear line, and the portfolio that grew around it.

The buying continued after J.W. Childs arrived. The trade site Pet Insight reported on 16 October 2018 that Outward Hound had acquired Planet Dog, a toy maker established in 1997 and known for its Orbee balls, and that it had added the treat maker Wholesome Pride in July and the toy maker Charming Pet in August of that year. Planet Dog’s founder, Alex Fisher, was quoted on handing the brand and its social mission to the Outward Hound team; Hansen, quoted alongside him, carried the title Chief Woof Officer.

By the time of the 2026 release the company described itself as a maker and distributor of toys, games, gear, feeders, beds and treats for dogs and cats, and listed seven brands: Outward Hound, Best Friends by Sheri, Catstages, Wholesome Pride Pet Treats, Nina Ottosson, Planet Dog and Pupstages.

The name needs a little care in searches. Kyjen is the company name on older coverage, including the 2013 Westword profile and the 2017 deal reports, which described the business as Kyjen doing business as Outward Hound, while Outward Hound is the name the company now uses in its own announcements, including the July 2026 release from Centennial.

For a design guide, Outward Hound shows how a single trail-themed line, sketched first as a dog backpack, can become the umbrella name for a group of toy, treat and puzzle brands bought over more than a decade. Compare Benebone, the American chew-toy brand, and Nylabone, the long-running chew brand. For this guide we use trail orange, forest and charcoal with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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