Inside The Craft-Led Luxury Dog Brand Changing Pet Style
From Italian vegetable-tanned leather to real-world training insight, Australian brand PK9 Gear is redefining what luxury means for discerning dog owners.
4 min
For many luxury consumers, the idea of premium pet accessories has long been synonymous with designer logos and glossy marketing.
But in Melbourne, professional dog trainer Chris Loverseed is quietly reshaping the conversation around what true luxury dog gear should look and feel like.
As founder of PK9 Gear, Loverseed sits at the intersection of functional performance and traditional craftsmanship, creating handcrafted collars, leads and harnesses designed first and foremost with the dog in mind.
“As trainers, we work with dogs in real-world environments every day, so that experience directly influences how we design every piece of gear,” he told Kanebridge News.
Unlike many mass-produced pet accessories, PK9 Gear products are developed through hands-on training rather than driven by aesthetic trends.
“One of our core principles is that we only design and sell products that we genuinely use ourselves in training,” he said.
“Unfortunately, many brands create products simply to look trendy or appealing on social media, with very little consideration for how they actually function for the dog or the handler in the real world.”
For Loverseed, product development begins with performance, ergonomics and canine wellbeing.
“When I design a product, I always start with a dog-first perspective, and then consider the handler.
“That might mean looking at how a collar sits on a dog’s neck, how a lead feels in the handler’s hand, or whether a tug toy gives the dog the right grip and satisfaction when they bite.
“If a product doesn’t improve the dog’s experience and make handling easier, we simply don’t make it. That philosophy sits at the centre of everything we create at PK9 Gear.”
Defining luxury beyond logos
In a crowded market of designer-inspired pet accessories, Loverseed believes true luxury is less about branding and more about authenticity.
“Standing out from mass-produced pet accessories is actually quite simple. Using ethical labour, quality materials, and genuine craftsmanship already sets you apart from much of the market.
“But defining luxury is more complex, because luxury can mean different things to different people.”
He sees a broader shift taking place among consumers who are increasingly questioning what luxury really represents.
“I believe there is also a noticeable shift happening in the market.
“With USA tariffs and those viral videos showing how many “luxury” handbags are actually manufactured, consumers are starting to question whether luxury is simply a price tag or something more meaningful.”
Instead, he points to a growing appreciation for understated design and meticulous detail.
“For me, it is twofold. First, I believe quiet luxury is becoming the new flex, where quality and craftsmanship speak louder than visible branding.”
His work with high-net-worth dog owners has reinforced this belief.
“As a professional dog trainer in Melbourne, I work with several VIP clients who live in $40 million plus homes.
“One thing I have noticed is that people at that level are rarely trying to impress others with logos. They value craftsmanship, authenticity and products that are simply made well.”
Materials also play a defining role in the brand’s positioning.
“At PK9 Gear, we take the opposite approach. We use premium vegetable-tanned leathers from Italy, sourced from tanneries that are part of the Pelle Conciata al Vegetale consortium.”
These traditional tanning methods prioritise durability, natural finishes and longevity. Hardware choices are equally considered, with solid brass, stainless steel and 24-carat gold PVD stainless steel used across the range, alongside hand-stitched construction techniques.
“For us, luxury is not about logos. It is about craftsmanship, integrity in materials and creating gear that is functional, beautiful and built to last for both the dog and the handler.”
The rise of Australian craftsmanship
As global consumers move away from fast fashion and disposable purchases, Australian artisans are finding renewed recognition.
“Australian craftsmanship is definitely gaining global attention, and I think part of that comes from consumers moving away from fast fashion and mass production,” Chris said.
“People are beginning to value products that are made properly, with care and attention to detail.”
PK9 Gear reflects this shift by offering both accessible performance-driven products and highly bespoke pieces that showcase traditional leatherworking techniques.
“Traditional handmade products naturally come at a higher cost because of the time, skill and materials involved.
“That alone places them in a more premium or luxury category, but many consumers are now willing to pay for something that will last longer and has genuine craftsmanship behind it.
A trainer’s favourite companion
Despite working with a wide range of breeds, Loverseed has a clear personal favourite.
“If I could have only one dog breed it would be a Rottweiler,” he says.
In a luxury market increasingly driven by authenticity, longevity and meaningful design, PK9 Gear represents a new kind of status symbol.
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Randy Boyagoda’s new novel, “Lords of Serendipity,” delivers a biting satire of cheating, politics and dysfunction across modern universities.
5 min
Administrative cowardice. Rampant cheating. The soaking and scamming of undergrads and grad students. Performative wokeism. Intensifying competition for international tuition dollars from an expansive China.
These are either the latest dire headlines about American higher ed or the myriad subplots of “Lords of Serendipity,” an ambitious new novel by Randy Boyagoda. Unlike most campus fiction, its scope extends well beyond the cloister of the liberal arts classroom to whammy the entire university system, from its financial model to its function within a globalized economy. Along the way, it skewers its lightning-rod targets with a precision too sharp to be considered entirely fictional.
That its author is not only well-versed in satire, having written four other novels in the genre, but is also a professor of English at the University of Toronto and an experienced college administrator, further blurs the lines between comic fiction and brutal fact. It’s the kind of no-holds-barred book only a consummate insider would know to write—but only one who is also conveniently outside the American university system could get away with writing.
“This is someone who’s got the inside dope on what can go on at universities, especially with international students, and what kind of con games are going on,” said Margaret Atwood, a friend and fellow Torontonian.
The novel, like Boyagoda himself, is often very funny—even as the dilemmas its characters face read as tragedy. Its cast includes the bickering members of a Sri Lankan hotel cleaner’s family, insecure American freshmen, dead-end third-tier college professors and their highflying Ivy League counterparts and dispirited university functionaries. An old-fashioned Dickensian tale, it sweeps across continents and campuses, from a classic liberal-arts college to a stand-in for Harvard University to an urban technical school to the dilapidated buildings of a state-run university in Sri Lanka.
“I’m a joyful person,” Boyagoda said in an interview, though he prefers to see his outlook on academia as “hopeful” rather than optimistic. He smiles and laughs frequently. He bikes everywhere. He derives energy from his students and from his four daughters, ages 14 to 20. They help him and his American wife, Anna, also an educator, care for Boyagoda’s father, an immigrant from Sri Lanka who has dementia and lives with the family.
The germ of the novel came to Boyagoda during the pandemic, when he was serving as a vice-dean. An urban legend was circulating about a statistics grad student selling passing grades to international students. The cheating scheme itself may well have been apocryphal, but it felt tantalizingly plausible.
“As a novelist, it stayed with me,” Boyagoda said. “Who would sell grades for a stats course? Why would someone buy grades? What’s motivating them? Why wouldn’t the university be doing something about it?” What he didn’t want to do, he explained, was write “another novel about a creative writing professor and his drama with students.”
In addition to writing novels—the first of which was a finalist for Canada’s prestigious Giller Prize; he’s written eight books in total—Boyagoda teaches literature full-time. For his students next semester, kids raised in a purportedly “post-literature era,” he’s assigning three 700-page novels, he noted mischievously, books by George Eliot, Ralph Ellison and Kiran Desai.
On RateMyProfessors, students remark on Boyagoda’s heavy assignments, tough grading and distaste for cellphones, but also hail his “comedy.” When alerted to these reviews, Boyagoda laughed. “Guilty as charged,” he said.
“Randy’s one of those people in academia who is very well educated but doesn’t have an ounce of superiority about him,” said John Irving, who frequently guest lectures in Boyagoda’s classroom. “It’s amazing to see how willing students are to talk in his classrooms, how little afraid they feel of being mocked or put down—he gets complete candor out of them.”
Negotiating competing interests seems to come naturally to him. Like many college campuses, after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the University of Toronto was embroiled in protests, encampments and discord; part of the school’s response was to convene a working group on civil discourse. Boyagoda was put in charge, serving for two years. It’s the kind of thankless task many professors would flee from, but Boyagoda relished the prospect and thinks the group, which is ongoing, made progress.
He has since pivoted to another formidable academic concern: the waning prestige of the humanities. In July, Boyagoda became the director of the Jackman Humanities Institute and special advisor on the humanities to the dean of arts and science. This fall, he is starting a series of gatherings he calls the Dead Book Club. (Dead writers feature heavily among his favorites: St. Augustine, Dante, William Faulkner, Evelyn Waugh, Saul Bellow.)
“The goal is to encourage students to read for its own sake and have conversation for its own sake,” Boyagoda said. “The importance of the humanities will be revealed to those who participate.”
“Lords of Serendipity,” which publishes next week, reflects Boyagoda’s commitment to the pursuit of knowledge: “I’m supposed to say I learn more from my students than they do from me, but no,” Boyagoda said. “I enjoy sharing my excitement and joy about literature and ideas. There are these moments when you are teaching and you can see someone’s face change because they didn’t know something and then they did. That moment when you’re actually watch someone enlarge themselves is deeply satisfying.”
In literary circles, Boyagoda is often referred to as a Catholic novelist, a description he embraces. “A novelist willing to give shape and voice to contemporary religious experience is needed,” Boyagoda said. “I understand myself as a Catholic novelist, provided that I’m not only a Catholic novelist, I’m also a South Asian novelist and I’m a Canadian novelist. I don’t want to be captive to one label.”
His characters, he said, are subjected to what he calls “Graham Greene character situations.”
“They are trying to do good in a fallen world and realize the most they can do is less harm than someone else would do in that same role,” he explained. “They have to accept they are complicit in something that provides some good thing to others. It’s a very Graham Greene way of thinking about sacrifice.”
The campus green they inhabit is a febrile zone in which lofty ideals and cynicism regularly collide. It’s a place where a traditional holiday college celebration is now an occasion for political protest. Kids freely police one another inside and out of the classroom with social media their constant, ready weapon of choice. International students, knowing their family’s financial futures hinge on their degrees, operate in terror of failure and deportation.
Early readers of the book include Gary Shteyngart and Junot Diaz, both of whom have taught at universities and written comic novels. They each contacted Boyagoda midway through to say, in essence, “You nailed it.”
As biting as “Lords of Serendipity” can be, Boyagoda’s faith in higher education remains undaunted.
“It’s absurd that we live in societies that make the decision to take people between the ages of 18 and 22, when they are most physically capable of contributing to our nations and communities, and tell them, ‘Go away for four years, and read and learn and have conversations,’” he said. “I want students to be aware of what an incredible privilege that is.”
Corrections & Amplifications
Randy Boyagoda is a special advisor on the humanities to the dean of arts and science at the University of Toronto. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said he is a special adviser to the dean of humanities. (Corrected on Sept. 2)
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