Why the Bottom of an ABUBA Dog Backpack Isn't Flat

People sometimes ask why the bottom of an ABUBA isn't flat. It slopes in toward the wearer's body instead of ending in a flat, horizontal base.

The short answer: we wanted the bag to support a dog the way your arms do when you hold one. This story is about how we got there. We didn't start with this shape. We started with bags that didn't work well for us.

We didn't set out to make a bag

Before ABUBA, I tried several ways of carrying a dog.

After a dog in our family passed away, Lime had a hard time being left alone. I couldn't leave her, so she had to come with me wherever I went.

I started with a sling bag. I carried a dog of about 6 kg that way, and her posture wasn't stable. The weight pulled to one side, and my pelvis and one shoulder took most of it.

Then I used a frame backpack with a firm, horizontal base. It had plenty of room inside. But the one I used was heavy, and hard on my back. When I walked, the dog moved around inside along with me. The rigid base passed the vibration of every step straight through, and it got in the way around my spine. Most of all, I didn't feel that it held the dog's center.

I wanted the bag to stop moving separately from my body.

That led to a question: what kind of bag should it be?

The idea started with a familiar scene

The answer came from something I had known since I was a child. In Korea, mothers have long carried babies on their backs with a podaegi, a cloth wrap that ties the child close to the body.

What I saw in it wasn't a baby placed inside a bag. It was a child held close to the mother's body, moving along with her. The cloth wraps the child broadly and supports the whole body, so the two move almost as one.

ABUBA takes its name from the Korean word "eobuba," a familiar expression for carrying a child on your back.

I'm not saying a podaegi is better or safer than any other way of carrying a child. It was a memory and a design motif, not evidence.

Then I thought about how I hold a dog in front of me. One hand supports the hips. The other supports the back.

The idea was to turn those two hands into a bag.

• The bottom of the bag is the hand under the hips.
• The body and back-side structure of the bag is the hand behind the back.

We weren't trying to force a dog into a particular shape. The goal was to support the dog's body as it is, and let it lean back the way you lean against the back of a chair.

To make the bag move with the wearer, we left out the rigid frame. ABUBA is frameless.

We weren't trying to invent a new way of carrying. People have carried children close to the body for a very long time. We redesigned that familiar idea for a dog's body and for the way the person carrying it moves.

Why the bottom isn't flat

This direction was there from the first generation. We wanted the dog to lean back toward its back and hips instead of bracing forward. As we worked through different structures, the bottom ended up slanting diagonally instead of staying horizontal.

Picture a dog leaning into the back of a chair, or into a car seat. The bag holds the dog around, and the dog can rest back.

The dog's knees are bent inside the bag. In a photo, that can look like a person crouching forward with their weight on their knees. That isn't what we intended. The bent knees may look similar, but where the weight sits is what matters to us. In ABUBA, we designed the center of weight to sit toward the back, so that the dog leans toward its back and hips.

That is design intent. We haven't measured what this structure does to a dog's knees, joints or spine, so we don't claim it is good for them or that it is safe.

What we watch for, and what we don't know

We have watched how dogs behave in the bag for a long time, during fittings and use tests. These are things we often see:

• The dog doesn't grip the bag with its claws.
• The front legs hang down.
• The body goes loose and leans in.
• The dog hands its weight over to the bag or to the person.
• Sometimes the dog falls asleep.

When the dog looks like it is bracing forward, or the posture looks uncomfortable, we have also seen dogs keep shifting and re-adjusting how they sit.

We treat a dog leaning in with less effort as one observation signal. It isn't a veterinary-verified sign of comfort. Every dog is different, and behavior alone can't tell us how a dog is doing. A photo is only one moment. Whether a dog is panting hard or tense is something you can only tell by watching over time.

Not a one-time design

Every ABUBA generation, from ABUBA1 to the models we make today, is frameless, and the basic direction hasn't changed: let the dog lean back instead of bracing forward.

Each time we upgrade a bag, we test it for at least a year. During that time we keep watching the dog's posture, how steady it seems, how the bag feels to wear, how much room the bottom gives, its shape, and the fit of the whole bag. We keep making small changes.

Dogs have different bodies, and the same bag won't give every dog the same posture. In practice, size, fit, choosing the right model and getting used to the bag all matter together. Our ABUBA Size Guide explains how to measure.

The models also differ in how much support they add. LITE2 is simpler, with no Hip Belt and no Dog Back Support Cover. ABUBA4 has a fixed wide Hip Belt and a Dog Back Support Cover, which adds support around the dog's back. MAX is built for larger, heavier dogs. For more on how the weight is carried, see How ABUBA Carries Weight.

The sloped bottom of an ABUBA isn't a decorative choice. It is our current answer to a simple question: how can we support a dog the way we do when we hold it? We don't know everything yet, and the answer may keep changing.