Meet Penn, Wyn, and Ziggy

We're Penn and Wyn, a married couple who somehow ended up building an entire website around whether or not it's too hot to walk our dog. That dog is Ziggy, a two-year-old brindle whippet who runs this house whether we admit it or not.

About Ziggy

Ziggy is a brat. He knows it. We know it. But he's our brat. We like to think we've trained him. Really, he's trained us. He loves squirrels with his whole chest, lives for constant butt rubs, and would play all day long if we let him.

Commands only land if there's food involved when he's tired. Whippets, and sighthounds as a whole, have a "what's in it for me" vibe, and Ziggy embodies it completely. Even his bathroom breaks take longer than they should, because he's far too nosy to worry about something as trivial as actually going potty when there's a whole world to sniff first.

He loves the fireplace in winter and the patio in summer, so much that we now keep ice cubes by his head while he basks in the heat. Can't have him overheating doing the thing he loves most.

His favorite hobby is stealing things. A sock, a tissue, whatever he's not supposed to have. It's never really about the item. His actual life goal is getting chased for it.

Why we built this

We don't have a backyard, which means Ziggy's walks are his real exercise, not just a quick trip outside to handle business. That makes the "should we walk today" question a lot more important for us than it might be for other dog owners.

Here in Colorado, summers get hot fast, and the higher altitude can dry a dog out quicker than most people expect. Sighthounds are especially vulnerable, with their thin coats and low body fat.

As Ziggy has become more dog and less puppy, we've become a lot more aware of how fast things can go wrong. Watching him eat something he shouldn't (hooray for pet insurance!), teaching him boundaries with other people and dogs, and even understanding when he's overtired and needs to rest. We're very careful, and we know that heat is no exception to the watchdog rule.

So we built the tool we wished we'd always had: something fast and simple that tells us straight up whether today is a walk day, especially for puppers like Ziggy who don't have a yard to fall back on.

The guy who started it all