Dogpacking with Cowboy
Ask any of my family, friends or former coworkers at the Bike Fed, and they will tell you that I’ve always been something of an outlier. In high school my sport was pole vaulting, and I was president of the Astronomical Society. My out-of-the-norm tendencies have continued to run the gamut from my career choice (Is bike advocate a real job?) to fashion sense (Is that guy riding his bike in a vintage sharkskin suit?). Once, while dressed as a giant chicken when doing a crosswalk safety demonstration by my daughter’s school, her friend asked, “Is that really your dad?” My daughter replied with a sigh, “Oh Fiona, you don’t even know the half of it…”
Our daughter is an adult now, and my wife and I are semi-retired in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. We live in Seeley, which is halfway between Hayward and Cable, in the epicenter of the Chequamegon Mountain Bike Association trail network. Many avid cyclists live here for the great mountain biking and gravel riding. Most of them still race, train, and wear lycra. I no longer race or train. When I knock off chores, I put away the hammer or chainsaw and hop on my bike in the leather work boots and work clothes I was wearing for my chores. Outlier…
I have a group of cycling friends from the Wausau area who also love bikepacking. They are all younger, still race a lot, and are so much faster than me that I no longer go on trips with them so they don’t have to stop and wait for me all the time. While I do have some hopes of getting faster again by riding more, for now my number one riding buddy is Cowboy, our 9-year-old Border Collie Hound mix. He never seems to be too busy. I don’t have to plan weeks ahead to get on his calendar. He doesn’t complain that I talk too much on rides!
Cowboy grew up riding in cargo bikes, so the transition to dogpacking didn’t require much training. When we lived in Milwaukee, I had a Yuba Supermarche front loader with a large black plastic tote he would ride in when we would go to the park or to visit friends. I lived near the mountain bike trails in Wauwatosa. When he was younger, he would run alongside my MTB the two miles to the trails, hang on my wheel for a 20-mile ride, sit next to me while I had a post-ride beer outside at Cafe Hollander, and trot home with me after.
We sold our front loader when we left the city because the low ground clearance and narrower tires seemed impractical for the Northwoods. Last year when I saw Omnium came out with a hybrid front loader cargo bike with room for 2.4” mountain bike tires that some people were using to race multi-day endurance races, the idea of bringing Cowboy along on bikepacking trips seemed like a possibility.
Luckily, my buddy Greg Smith at Everyday Cycles in Milwaukee had a medium Omnium V3 full-length cargo frame in stock. Greg and I built it up together on my next trip down using spares I had, sweet new Hayes Dominion brakes and some stock Omnium parts. Cowboy took to the Omnium front loader quickly and required very little training to get him to hop up in the basket.
It took me four tries to find the right basket. I started with a 24” x 16” x 8″ mesh straight wall plastic storage tote but it was too short for Cowboy to lie down in. Version 2.0 was a larger plastic underbed storage bin from Walmart but the short sides were not safe. Version 3.0 was a wicker basket with taller sides but the slides were too flexible. Finally, we discovered that version 4.0, a 32” x 15” x 7½” straight wall plastic storage bin from Amazon, was just right.
I used a step drill to make lots of holes in the bottom and sides so it drained better. I cut down a folding closed cell sleeping pad for a cushion, and Cowboy hopped in the first time I asked him to. After a few days of rides though, I realized that the plastic bin was sturdy enough that it didn’t need the support of the steel and webbed cargo deck that comes on the Omnium. So I removed that deck (cutting four pounds from the bike) and mounted the plastic bin directly to the frame with some aluminum square tubing and plate I bought at the local hardware store.
I have used this v4.2 basket for the last two bikepacking trips we took and all of the day rides Cowboy and I have done together since the summer of 2024. In addition to saving weight by removing the stock cargo deck, drilling the holes shaved almost another pound off the basket. These holes also allow me to mount dry bags with Cowboy’s food, his custom sleeping bag, air mattress and any overflow gear that I can’t fit in the other bikepacking bags on the bike.
Of those, I am most excited about the custom frame pack that the crew at Cedaero in Two Harbors, MN made for me. It has a cavernous main compartment, a full side pocket on the non-drive side of the bike and a long lower pocket that is perfect for tubes and my tripod. In the back, I use either an Old Man Mountain rack with their panniers and Juniper Trunk or a Tumbleweed pannier rack with Widefoot triple mount cargo cages that hold Sea to Summit 8L Big River dry bags. This leaves plenty of storage space for me, my camera/video gear, clothing, sleep system, shelter and other camping needs.
Fully loaded with Cowboy and three full water bottles, my rig weighs about 90 lbs. The unloaded bike, with the basket but no cargo deck, weighs 42 lbs. That is only about 10 lbs heavier than a typical steel bikepacking bike.
Initially, I was concerned that it might be too bumpy for Cowboy and I would need to find a 20” suspension fork, but the Omnium Cargo V3 has a magic carpet ride. I think the long wheelbase takes the edge off the small vibrations and even most washboard found on gravel roads. I do have a PNW Coast suspension seat post to take the edge off any unseen big hits since I broke three vertebrae a couple years ago.
I have learned a few things on my adventures with Cowboy worth mentioning. The biggest thing is how we deal with biting flies, mosquitoes, gnats, and ticks during summer bug season. It turns out that Cowboy hates them as much as I do. Biting flies are the worst, as they can fly as fast as we can ride and swarm around Cowboy’s head. I have been using a cheap bug net over my helmet when the flies are bad so I tried one on Cowboy. He was weirded out at first, but it only took him about 5 minutes to figure out that it kept the bugs off him and he settled into it. I also got him a summer-weight vest treated with Permethrin since I treat my clothes with Permethrin during tick season. That plus his oral tick medication have reduced the number of ticks I find on him (and me) to almost zero.
The other unusual thing I did to make Cowboy’s dogpacking experience a little more comfortable is to upcycle his own sleeping bag and air mattress out of an old 45° Big Agnes bag I no longer use. I cut that bag in half and sewed the bottom together. Then I did the same thing with a Thermarest Neoair Uberlite air mattress that I stopped using because the old-school valve is so slow to deflate and the fabric is very noisy. I just heated the seam with an iron to weld the cut air mattress back together.
I slip the air mattress inside the Big Agnes system bag so that Cowboy doesn’t slide off during the night. When it is warm, Cowboy sleeps on top of it, but when it gets colder, he balls up inside his cozy bed. He wants to go in his sleeping bag, so I know he appreciates not being on the cold ground.
We average about 40 or 50 miles per day on our two-to-three day adventures. Of those, Cowboy typically runs a total of 20 miles a day and sits in his basket the rest of the time. That doesn’t sound like a lot of miles to ride in a day, but part of what I like about bikepacking and dogpacking is stopping to explore old CCC camp ruins, grabbing a swim at an inviting lake on a hot day, making photos/videos, and hiking to waterfalls or scenic vistas.
I think we will extend our daily mileage and try longer trips this summer, but at his age, I don’t want to push him. Cowboy honestly seems stoked to come with me, making like my shadow when he sees I am packing the Omnium. For me, I’m stoked to have a regular riding partner who enjoys exploring new places and doesn’t mind how slow I ride or how much I talk.
This article was originally published in the 2025 Bike Fed Ride Guide.