Pet toys built from animal psychology first

We don't fight instinct. We design for it.

Your dog wants to gut something. Your cat needs to kill something. That's not a problem — that's the product brief.

Pet Forward Earth First Human Honest

Our Thesis

Pets aren't problems. They're just bored.

When your dog destroys a toy, that's not bad behavior — that's the prey sequence completing exactly as evolution intended: catch, shake, gut, carry. When your cat scratches the bedroom door at 6am, that's a crepuscular predator whose hunt cycle never finished.

The industry's answer has been to suppress it. Indestructible toys. Calming sprays. Anti-everything products designed to make instinct quieter and easier to ignore. We think that's exactly backward.

Design for instinct instead of against it, and the "problem" disappears — because it was never a problem. It was a need that wasn't met.

"Instinct isn't the enemy. It's the design brief."

Product 01 · For Dogs

Your dog finally caught the squirrel. Now what?

In Development · Join the List

Dogs have a hardwired prey sequence: catch, shake, gut, carry. Every plush toy on the market ends at "shake." Gutty Buddy is designed for what comes next.

Four real toys hide inside a durable squirrel shell with a hidden fastener flap. Gut it, carry the organs around, stuff it back, repeat. When the innards wear out (and they will), replacement packs ship to your door.

Get Updates on Gutty Buddy

Product 02 · For Cats

The 6am problem. Finally solved.

Working Prototype · In Live Testing

Cats are crepuscular hunters. When the prey cycle doesn't complete — stalk, chase, catch, kill — they don't sleep. They find other outlets. Usually your bedroom door.

Prowl is an autonomous multi-node hunt system that runs the 4am shift. Speaker and burrow nodes stage a believable mouse moving through your home, tuned to real rodent vocalizations and randomized every time so cats never learn the trick.

It doesn't replace human play. Nothing does. It fills the gaps.

Get Updates on Prowl

For the People Funding the Hunt

Why this wins.

Everything on this page is written for pet owners — because a brand that makes owners feel understood is the pitch. Here's the shape of the business underneath it.

A real wedge in a crowded aisle

Pet toys compete on cuteness and durability. Nobody owns "designed from animal psychology." Behavior-first design is a defensible position, not a decoration.

Two products, one thesis

Gutty Buddy (dogs) and Prowl (cats) ship the same conviction to both halves of the pet market — one brand, one story, two instincts served.

Recurring by design, not by trap

Gutty Buddy innards wear out and get replaced. Prowl is a platform that grows with new prey characters and nodes. Repeat revenue that owners actually want.

Honesty is the moat

No fake reviews, no invented waitlists, no greenwash. In a category drowning in hype, a brand people believe compounds faster than a brand people scroll past.

Read the Investor Brief

Working prototypes in live testing. Human Honest applies to this section too — ask us anything.

West Olive, Michigan · Home Base 42.93° N, 86.12° W Drag the planet — it always comes home.

Earth First

We're not there yet. Here's where we're going.

Right now, our prototypes use virgin plastic and more shipping packages than we would like. We're not going to greenwash our way through early development and quietly fix it later when no one's looking. That's not how "Human Honest" works. Before a single product ships, we commit to these:

Bamboo and natural materials first.

Any structural part that doesn't need to be electrical will be bamboo, cotton, hemp, or natural fiber. Not because it's trendy — because the best materials for animals shouldn't be the worst materials for the planet.

Zero proprietary consumables.

When a part wears out, you replace it with something from a hardware store, a pet shop, or your local grocery. No locked refill pods. No subscription traps. No parts that only we can sell you.

Repairable to the component level.

If one small part fails, you replace that part, not the whole unit. Any repair should be something any owner can do with basic tools and parts they can find locally.

We're building something that should still exist in twenty years. That means building it like the planet has to survive it too.

Human Honest

We'll tell you when it doesn't work.

If Ari ignores a prototype, we say so. If a design fails in the field, that's a data point, not something we hide.

We're a small operation in West Michigan building something we genuinely believe in. We're going to get things wrong. When we do, we'll tell you.

Fake reviews or invented waitlist numbers

"As seen on" claims we haven't earned yet

Influencer footage of animals performing on cue

Yes

Real animals. Real failures. Real updates.

Fair Questions

The things pet owners actually ask.

Straight answers, Human Honest as always. If yours isn't here, email Josh — a real person replies.

Why does my cat wake me up at 5am?

Because cats are crepuscular — wired to hunt at dawn and dusk. If the hunt cycle (stalk, chase, catch, kill) never completes, that energy needs an outlet, and the 5am outlet is usually you. It isn't spite and it usually isn't hunger. It's an unfinished hunt. Prowl is our answer: an autonomous hunt system that runs the dawn shift so the hunt happens on the floor, not on your ankles.

Why does my dog rip the stuffing out of every toy?

Because that's what prey is for, as far as your dog is concerned. Dogs inherit a prey sequence — catch, shake, gut, carry — and gutting is a step in it, not a malfunction. Gutty Buddy is a plush squirrel designed for that step: the innards are toys, the shell resets, and replacement organ packs keep the ritual going.

Are destructible dog toys safe?

A toy engineered to open one specific way beats a toy that shreds into random pieces. Gutty Buddy's organ toys are sized to be carried and its shell is built to be reset, not eaten. Honest part: no toy is chew-proof or risk-free, so supervise play — especially with dedicated shredders. That advice applies to every toy in the house, including ours.

What is the prey sequence, or hunt cycle?

The chain of instinctive behaviors every predator runs: search, stalk, chase, catch, kill — then for dogs, dissect and carry. Most pet toys serve exactly one link in the chain. A lot of "behavior problems" are just the missing links looking for an outlet. We design toys that complete the chain instead of interrupting it.

Do enrichment toys actually fix behavior problems?

When they target the right instinct, they can help dramatically — behavioral issues are a leading reason cats are surrendered to shelters, and the AVMA's 2025 position statement recognizes enrichment as a health need for indoor cats. Honest answer: no toy fixes everything, and serious issues deserve a vet or behaviorist. But a predator whose hunt cycle completes is a calmer housemate. That's the bet the whole company is built on.

When do Gutty Buddy and Prowl launch?

Gutty Buddy is in development, headed toward a first production run. Prowl is a working prototype in live testing — current QA lead: Artemis, who remains impossible to impress. We don't do fake countdowns or invented ship dates. Join the list and we'll tell you the truth as dates firm up.

Our Story

It started with a cat at the bedroom door.

West Michigan. Every morning. 6am. Artemis — our rescue cat, confirmed murderess, dedicated professional — appears at the bedroom door. Not because she's hungry. Because she's a predator whose hunt cycle hasn't completed, and apparently our ankles count as prey.

Zara, our dog, doesn't just disembowel her toys. She eats the stuffing. The pet industry's answer was toys with no stuffing at all. But that misses the point entirely. What she loves isn't the stuffing — it's the tearing. Taking that away isn't a solution, it's a smaller version of the same problem.

Planet Pounce started as an attempt to solve these two very specific, very real problems. It turned into something bigger: a conviction that the pet industry has been designing for the wrong species. Most pet products are built for the human's living room. We're building for the animal's nervous system.

We don't have all the answers yet. We have two products in development, a cat who passes judgment on every prototype with complete indifference, and a genuine belief that the toys pets deserve don't have to cost the planet.

Josh Hamman Founder, Planet Pounce · West Michigan