I designed a nose guard for my dog and gave it away. Now 500 dogs wear one | SnoutCover
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Omri Hillel · Reviewed by Billie October 15, 2026 · Signed off with one lick SnoutCover mode On Billie's nose is covered in every photo, stitches and all. Tap any photo to peek, or switch off to see them uncovered. Pull up a chair.
It's been a year, and I want to tell you how we got here. It starts with Billie, my pitbull, a dog who lives for lying in the sun. When she was diagnosed with DLE, the vet laid it out plainly: there's no quick fix, only management. Ointment on her nose twice a day, keep her out of the UV, and expect flare-ups for the rest of her life. Billie's nose after surgery, and Billie doing her favorite thing. That sounded manageable until the first evening I tried it. You put the ointment on, and she licks it straight off. You can't hold a dog's tongue away from her own nose for ten minutes, twice a day, forever. And you certainly can't explain to a sun-loving dog why the yard is suddenly off limits. Billie's nose in spring 2024. So I did what I always do when something bothers me. I sat down and designed something. I called it Doguard. It took thirteen prototypes, a lot of evenings and a very patient dog, but eventually it worked. Billie could wear it, the ointment stayed where it belonged, and she got her sunbathing back. Billie in the first version. I want to be honest about what happened next, because it matters: I never planned to sell it. I made it for Billie. Once it worked, I uploaded the file to MakerWorld and wrote the whole process up on Reddit, free for anyone to print. I remembered how lost I felt in those first weeks after the diagnosis, and I figured if even one other dog owner found it and had a solution, that was worth it. Then the messages started. Could I sell them one? At first I tried to help people make their own. I'd help them find someone who could print it locally, explain how to scale it for their dog, walk them through putting the webbing straps together. Some did it beautifully. But slowly something sank in that seems obvious now: not everyone is a creator. Most people just love their dog and want to get a solution, fast.
And if I was the one who could make that happen, it felt wrong not to. So on October 1st last year, I built a small website. Sixteen days later, my first customer placed an order. The first site, back when it was still called Doguard. I wish I could tell you I celebrated. I panicked. I had no inventory. I ran to print everything I could. Then I ran out to find webbing, suddenly worried about the next two or three orders that hadn't even happened yet. Then it dawned on me that a package has to be packed! That somebody opens it, and what they open matters. Then that packages go to a post office, and post offices have queues. Remember, I never set out to sell these, so I hadn't given a single thought to any part of that cycle. Two days later a second order came in. On the 24th, two more. A few weeks in, I decided to give it a new name: SnoutCover. That was the beginning. Designing the cover in Onshape, getting it ready in Bambu Studio, and printing it in the shed. A year at the bench Not much about how it's made has changed. I still print every SnoutCover myself, on one printer in my studio shed. I still cut and assemble every strap, pack every envelope, and hand each week's batch to the Sunday pickup. What's changed is how far those envelopes travel. As of today, SnoutCover has helped more than 500 dogs. Most of them wear a cover I made myself - 395 orders, to 16 countries - and the rest wear covers their owners printed and assembled themselves. I still find that hard to believe. Just a few of the dogs now living a better life with the help of SnoutCover. It wasn't all smooth. Getting parcels across the world turned out to be the hardest part of the whole thing, and when some got stuck along the way, I sent them again at my own cost.
I know how stressful it is to watch a tracking page that won't move while your dog's nose needs help, so sometimes I just sent a second one while the first was still on its way. Getting it right The first year was also one long round of fixes. Every email, every photo of a dog in a cover that didn't sit quite right, went straight back to the bench. The straps changed the most. A cover that slid up on every lick looked like a sizing problem, but it almost never was. The real fix was where the collar fasteners sat, so I kept reworking the strap design and the way I assemble it, until the cover stayed put without being pulled tight against a sensitive nose. The model changed too. When enough dogs got a paw under the Shield and pulled until it tore, I stopped treating it as a training issue and reinforced it where it flexes and where the straps pull. And some dogs simply don't fit a standard size. A Bull Terrier's long, curved nose needs coverage much further along the bridge than any stock cover gives, so I designed one from scratch, shaped from photos of that one dog. Custom models like that have become part of the work: when the standard sizes don't fit a dog's needs, I build one that does. The custom Bull Terrier cover, fitted on a model of the dog's head. And some of it wasn't about the product at all. Plenty of dogs freeze the first time they wear one - head down, waiting it out. That's normal, and it passes with a lick mat and a week of short, easy sessions. So I wrote it all down: tutorials for fitting, for training, for those first few days. None of it is finished, and I don't think it ever will be. The goal hasn't changed since the first prototype: every cover a little better, and a little more reliable, than the last. The Care, and the two weeks that made it In late May, a shipping issue put everything on hold for about two weeks. It felt like terrible timing. It turned out to be the best thing that happened to the product, because for the first time since launch, I had nothing to pack. Just a bench, a printer, and a problem that had been quietly piling up in my inbox. Some dogs needed something for the other twenty-two hours of the day. Not sun protection, just a gentle barrier during ointment time, or for noses so sensitive they couldn't be licked at all and had to stay protected while fully ventilated. The clearest case came from Stephanie and her husky, Iris. Iris's nostrils sat low compared to the openings on her cover, so every lick knocked it out of place. Her nose was raw enough that any movement hurt, and in the videos Stephanie sent I could hear that a fully covered nose was stressing her out. We tried every strap position and size. Two other owners were writing to me about the same thing. Eventually I understood that Iris didn't need a better rigid cover. She needed less cover. Getting there was a slog. The first versions simply wouldn't come out the way I pictured them. Then came the balance: too much material and it may as well be solid, too little and it stopped being a barrier at all. Then shapes that looked perfect on the bench and gave up the moment they met a warm nose. Breathing room came last, and it's the whole reason the model exists. A few of the Care prototypes. And then, after a long stretch of nothing, the idea just arrived - a completely different way of thinking about how the whole thing comes together. It solved most of those problems at once, and turned out far more durable than the original, too. The Care. Billie tested it first, on a walk home from the vet. She wore it the whole way without a fuss. Not a formal test, but after a year of watching her reject things, I know what yes looks like on her.
Billie testing an early Care prototype. In the first week of June, I sent Stephanie an early unit for Iris. In July, she wrote back: it lined up better on Iris's snoot, it was easier to clean, and Iris seemed happier in it. The Care went on sale at the end of June.