Taku is a seven-year-old Shiba Inu with impeccable taste and the attention span of a goldfish.

He'll demolish whatever's on our dinner plate — salmon, pasta, stir-fried beef — but throw a piece of standard dog treat at him and he acts personally offended. After two weeks of any kibble, he's done. Completely over it.

We wanted to spoil him with human food, but every search about table scraps led us down a rabbit hole of warnings about sodium, sugar, and spices. Trying to trick him into eating vegetables? Impossible. 

The problem nobody's solving

Nutritious dog meals? Easy to find. Nutritious kibble? Available. But treats — especially jerky sticks?

That's where the industry falls apart. Most dog treats are either junk food or boring sticks with the texture of cardboard. We'd stand in pet store aisles reading ingredient labels like medieval manuscripts, finding fillers, artificial preservatives, and enough salt to season a steak.

It felt impossible to find a treat Taku would love and that we'd feel good about giving him. So we did what any slightly obsessive pet parent does: we decided to make our own.

The kitchen experiment

We researched. Consulted dog nutritionists. Built a recipe with more than a dozen ingredients designed to be nutritious, palatable, and something a picky dog might enjoy.

Then we drove to Safeway and bought everything.

What followed was chopping vegetables, mixing by hand, squeezing everything through a piping bag, and laying it all out on a tray to air-dry overnight. The first batch wasn't going to win any food photography awards. The texture was off. The moisture was wrong. They looked literally like poop💩.

But Taku? He demolished them like gourmet cheeseburgers.

That validation was everything.

From kitchen to reality

We started giving them away. Dogs from the same apartment building, dogs we'd meet on walks (with their parents' permission). We handed out treats to anyone who'd let us.

Result: 9 out of 10 dogs loved them.

That's when we knew this was real.

We reached out to over 20 manufacturers across the country. The responses were creative rejections: "We don't do individually wrapped treats." "We only work with meat." "Our minimum order is $100k." It's like everyone wants us to call quit.

It took five months to find a co-manufacturer that's right for us. Another five months of figuring out production, sourcing, logistics, quality control, and packaging before we got our first batch.

12 months between "let's do this" and actually holding a finished product.

Here we are

This process has been wild. From Taku's pickiness to our kitchen experiments to the manufacturing gauntlet to finally getting here.

But this is what we wanted: jerky treats that are actually nutritious, nutritionally balanced, that dogs genuinely love, and that dog parents can feel good about giving.

More protein options, size-specific formulas, treats for dietary restrictions — we're just getting started, and we know Taku is getting excited! 😜