WoofTrax

Doug Hexter, Founder

Easthampton, Massachusetts

Go for the Gold challenge in WoofTrax where the more walks the dog owners log, the more flea-and-tick protection shelter dogs get

A dog owner turning a daily walk with their dog into donations for a local shelter by using WoofTrax

2026

Health at both ends of the leash: How WoofTrax brings pet parents and shelters closer together

In 2014, marketer and lifelong dog lover Doug Hexter launched WoofTrax to turn dog walks into donations for animal shelters and rescues. Since then, the free app has helped pet parents across the U.S. log millions of walks and raise funds for nearly 12,000 local organizations.

When paw prints led to PokéStops

When Doug Hexter talks about WoofTrax he doesn’t start with downloads or even revenue. Nope, he starts with a walk.

Picture a person clipping a leash onto their four legged companion, stepping outside, all the while using an app that incidentally turns every step into a micro-donation to their animal charity of choice.

They were going to walk anyway, so why not help shelters feed and care for pets along the way.

And that’s essentially the big idea behind WoofTrax, a mobile app Doug started about ten years ago to “create greater value” for three groups in particular: pet parents, local animal charities, and the brands that support them all.

“I’ve always been a pet lover,” he explains. Having pretty much spent his whole career on the marketing side of tech, Doug kept coming back to his big idea: animal shelters and rescues constantly fundraise in their communities, so how could he help them reach even more people than your average donation drive?

Enter WoofTrax. The app is free to install, and the kicker: each time a user logs a walk, they can earn a small sponsored donation from WoofTrax for their selected animal charity (often it’s the very rescue or shelter where they adopted their own little buddy).

Sure, those amounts may be just a few cents every time, but after millions of walks across North America, they add up. In fact, WoofTrax partners with nearly 12,000 shelters and rescues today across the United States.

And the impact can get emotional. Doug remembers quite a few emails from people all over the US who’ve downloaded the app, while recovering from serious health issues.

One person had adopted a dog with its own medical challenges. Then, as they walked together day after day, they both grew healthier; they both got stronger.

That kind of a shared healing between person and pooch really hit home for Doug.

Then there was the physician, the one who literally prescribed WoofTrax to a patient who needed to lose weight. Doug laughs about it when he tells it: “my human doctor prescribed WoofTrax ” is not a phrase he had ever expected to hear.

But he took it to heart and made it into a mantra of sorts: “health at both ends of the leash.”

Under the hood, WoofTrax works like your everyday fitness app too: users see maps of their walks, mileage, even progress over time. But at the end of the day, the whole experience rests on community.

People join user-created groups (a local French bulldog club, for instance) or they can choose brand-sponsored groups that include leaderboards and friendly competitions.

Some companies even run walking challenges for their employees, using WoofTrax groups, getting them to move, while raising money for shelters.

These days, WoofTrax counts about a million downloads or so, with thousands of new folks joining each month.

At one point, it even rode the Pokémon Go wave, when someone posted on social media telling followers to log their Pokémon hunts with their dog walks to raise money for charity. Within days, the app shot up to the top of the app store. Real pets, virtual pets — everybody got a walk that day.

But through all of it, Doug has stuck with one principle: the app stays free.

Screenshot of where users can track walks and charity contributions while using WoofTrax

How advertising helped underwrite donations to shelters

Keeping WoofTrax free for dog parents everywhere is key to how the app spreads.

Doug knows what the adoption experience looks like: you’re at a shelter, falling in love with that new furry, family member. That’s not exactly a good time to hit up anyone for a subscription fee.

“If the charity says, ‘here’s an app that will help you raise money when you walk, and oh, by the way, it costs twenty dollars,’ that’s a friction point,” he explains, putting his marketing hat on. “If it’s free, however, with the charity earning money instead. Well, then that’s a totally different conversation.”

That’s why Doug built WoofTrax around an ad-supported business model relying on a platform like Google AdMob to show display ads and rewarded video ads inside his app, providing steady revenue that doesn’t ask users to pay for anything.

Over time, WoofTrax has also incorporated brand sponsorships: whole campaigns built with pet health and nutrition brands. Even non-pet brands join the party, but all of them support walking groups and challenges.

Just take the long running partnership WoofTrax has with the pet food brand The Farmers Dog. Each walk in that group generates a donation, and if someone tries the food service, they receive a special discount while their chosen charity earns a bonus donation.

And then there’s NexGard, the flea and tick preventative from Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, who’s donated millions of dollars’ worth of product to shelter dogs in need — one dose for each walk taken in their WoofTrax walking group.

To Doug, these campaigns are a testing ground for the kind of one-to-one, community-based marketing he’s always believed in (and practiced as well throughout his own career).

He describes WoofTrax as a way for pet-care companies to build an emotional bond with consumers: they’re showing up every time someone opens the app to do something good for their dog and a local shelter.

While brand sponsorships make up the lion’s share of WoofTrax’s revenue nowadays, AdMob provides that consistent layer of ad revenue in the background. And the results speak to users’ loyalty.

WoofTrax emails often see open rates in the 70–80% range and click-through rates that can hit 30%, numbers that really perk up some ears (of the sponsors, of course).

“The folks using the app are highly engaged,” Doug says, and they care enough to reach out whenever something isn’t working. For example, whenever a bug pops up, he gets a flood of messages from people. For Doug, that’s like having a quality assurance team on tap.

That’s why Doug built WoofTrax around an ad-supported business model relying on a platform like Google AdMob to show display ads and rewarded video ads inside his app, providing steady revenue that doesn’t ask users to pay for anything.

Screenshot of the Community section of the WoofTrax app where users can join various walking groups

Growing a walking community for dogs and their parents everywhere

Today, WoofTrax operates as somewhat of a tight ship, a mostly remote team of eight to ten people. You’ve got your staff, contractors, programmers, and consultants spread across the U.S., with Doug based out of Easthampton, Massachusetts.

And it’s thanks in part to ad revenue that the team has a bit of breathing room to think and plan long term.

Looking ahead, Doug is planning changes anchored on international growth, starting with countries where rescues and brands are chomping at the bit to participate.

He acknowledges that such an expansion will mean having to figure out new challenges like localization, new charity relationships, not to mention, a potentially different regulatory environment as well.

But the core engine — walk, track, donate — is sure to work across borders.

“We often get emails from people overseas asking when they can join,” he says. For now, practically all of WoofTrax users live in the U.S., with some Canadian walkers chipping in to help American charities.

But if Doug has his way, in a few years, people in other countries will be lacing up their shoes and opening the app to walk for their local shelters too.

In the meantime, what keeps him going is that mantra he coined: a person and a dog out on a sidewalk, both getting healthier, both helping other animals with every step. And, thanks to advertising, it’s a gesture that can keep doing good, all while boosting everyone’s “health at both ends of the leash.”

About the Publisher

Doug Hexter is the founder of WoofTrax, a mobile app that turns dog walks into donations for animal shelters and rescues. A marketer by trade and dog lover for life, Doug has helped thousands of local organizations, pet parents, and pet brands form their own charity powered walking communities all over the United States.

WoofTrax founder Doug Hexter, creator of the app that turns dog-walking into donations