For New Yorkers, the subway is vital for navigating the massive city’s grid as it connects boroughs rife with culture that makes living in the city so special. It’s also a representation of the rat race mentality fueling the multifaceted industries propping up the Big Apple, since commuters keep to themselves, behaving as if they were already sealed off in their cubicles for the 9-to-5.
What better way to shatter that charade — that monotonous song and dance — than a humble dog in a backpack?
“It's never gotten normal when somebody comes up to us and starts talking to me, because New York is such a place where everybody minds their business. So somebody coming up to you and talking to you is pretty unique,” said Bryan Reisberg, whose subway escapades
built a social media empire. “And when I had Maxine in the backpack, I could really feel people looking, taking pictures, talking. So I knew like, ‘Oh, this is strange in a really good way.’ And it just made people happy and that made me happy.”
Reisberg is the brains behind Little Chonk, a specialized dog backpack brand that he created for fellow dog owners after recognizing the mass appeal strangers showed him as he brought Maxine, his corgi with millions of followers, on the subway.
However, as the Little Chonk brand soared to 5-star reviews on the backs of adventurous pup parents, Maxine suffered from arthritis. He documented her medical journey on their Instagram page, providing a transparent view of how a dog parent navigates treating an incurable disease.
“Her arthritis had gotten so severe that bone fragments had splintered off in her elbow,” he said.
Following surgery to remove the fragments, Maxine was on a strict crate rest regimen, meaning she literally had to be confined to a crate for months.
“I wanted to give her enough rest … I didn’t want to rely on her for social media — it wouldn’t have been good for our relationship,” Reisberg said.
After consulting with a fellow influencer friend, Bryan’s backpacks started benefitting a new clientele: shelter dogs in need of a forever home.
“It just kept me very invigorated creatively because it was new, and it was also one of the first times I remember making something that had a real-world impact off of a piece of content,” Reisberg explained. “I just started spending more time with the shelter dogs, which really changed me at a cellular level, so it's now become a really strong part and kind of the main focus of the Instagram account unexpectedly.”
His first trial run was with a dog named Axel. After a quick check-in with shelter and vet staff to see if the backpack was a proper fit for the pup, he went down to the subway to record with no expectations.
Within 48 hours, Axel had a new home after the video featuring him racked up 20 million views. Reisberg has been repeating this now tried-and-true formula since July 2025, leading to more than 50 dog adoptions.
One of the organizations Reisberg has worked with, Best Friends Animal Society, said it felt a reverberating impact from his viral videos.
“And so around December of last year, Best Friends had relaunched their Adventure Buddies program, which they had not publicized that much until these videos started going viral. The Adventure Buddies program is a program at Best Friends, and a lot of shelters now do it, where you can just kind of go in and take a dog out for a walk,” he explained. “It's very beneficial for the dogs to get out. And it also opens people up to the possibility of adoption."
Best Friends saw a a 30% uptick in adoptions after the videos went viral, Reisberg said.
While his shelter rides continued going viral, Maxine’s condition pushed Reisberg deeper into pet wellness. After years of trying different products, he said he was alarmed to learn some of the biggest joint supplements still relied on ingredients modern research has largely left behind, and realized he may have been “giving Maxine a placebo” for years.
He worked with veterinary specialists, including an orthopedic expert and a rare double board-certified nutritionist, to develop a hip-and-joint supplement built from more current science, which Little Chonk launched earlier this year.
“We changed the mission of the company to be about the wellness of our pets,” Reisberg said. “We want people to know exactly what’s in these products, why it’s there and what the science actually says.”
Reisberg hadn’t heard of "DOGust," the unofficial “universal birthday” for shelter dogs whose exact birth dates are unknown, until recently.
That said, the spirit of the day (Aug. 1) lines up neatly with his weekly backpack rides: He wants people who see his videos to go beyond hitting like and actually spend time with adoptable dogs.
“Go take a dog for a walk. Go do an adventure with a dog,” he said. “Any dog that you want … fluffy dog, little dog, big dog — it’s all available at a shelter. Whatever dog you think you want, that’s available at a shelter right now. They’re waiting.”
As "DOGust" 1st rolls around, that might mean signing up for an Adventure Buddies-style outing, visiting a local shelter or simply double-checking the labels on the supplements in your own pantry before you scoop them into a bowl. For Reisberg, Maxine isn’t just a cute corgi commuter; she’s the reason he’s trying to give shelter dogs a way out of crowded kennels and give every pet a better shot at a healthier life.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: From subway corgi to DOGust champion: How Maxine's rides sparked a shelter dog movement
