04 MarEpisode 195 | A $229 bully stick holder? Yup! A chat with the Treat Clincher’s creator, Susan Mravca of BarkerFun
Susan Mravca is an entrepreneur with a mission: To help people spend more time with their dogs, without their dogs bothering them. Bully sticks, she found, are great at keeping a dog occupied, but she didn’t like having to hold her dog’s chews in place in order to keep her from burying it or swallowing it. She decided to try to design something that could work—something unlike any other product she could find for this purpose—but she had one major criterion that was rather unusual: It had to be an object of great beauty. The result, which she designed with help from her brother —an engineer with a background in the Department of Defense — is the recently-launched Treat Clincher, which just won the prestigious Good Design Award. The price tag, however, will leave some pet owners aghast. Annie interviews Susan about the origins of this product (and offers a $30 coupon to the first five people to purchase a Treat Clincher at SchoolForTheDogs.com/clincher)
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Mentioned in this episode:
Treat Clincher Bully Stick Holder at Store For The Dogs
Good Design Awards 2021: The Treat Clincher by BarkerFun
Related Episodes:
Episode 25 | A Better Mousetrap: Building The Perfect Bully Stick Holder
Episode 79 | What is a bully stick? A very detailed answer to an awkward question
Transcript:
This episode is about a product we are just starting to sell at School For The Dogs and at StoreForTheDogs.com. And as I was editing the episode just now I was writing the product description for the online store. And this is what I wrote:
Do you worry about your dog swallowing bully sticks? Do you hate having saliva coated chews or sinewy raw bones dragged all over your carpet? Does your dog make you hold her bully stick or bother you when you're on Zoom calls? Do you worry that a home strewn with dog products messes with your mid-century modern aesthetic? Are you looking to buy a pet accessory that your child will hand down for generations? If you answered yes to even one of these questions, then this product, winner of the Good Design Award 2021, may be for you.
The product is the Treat Clincher, and it's pretty interesting. Its function is interesting. It's interesting looking and its creator is certainly interesting too. It's also pretty expensive. I'm gonna talk about that, but if you wanna get a visual and a spoiler alert on the price, go check out storeforthedogs.com while you are listening to this, or you can get to the product directly at schoolforthedogs.com/clincher
Annie:
As a dog trainer and someone interested in all things relating to products that help us have dogs in our homes and keep them happy and give them happy lives, I've developed this kind of sub interest in bully sticks. Bully sticks being dog chews that are made from pizzle, and pizzle is the penis of a bull. And we certainly sell a lot of bully sticks in our shop and online.
And I think I first started becoming interested in bully sticks in a more [laughs] academic way because I was really thinking about how did this happen? Have people who've had cattle farms always known that this was something that dogs would really enjoy? And isn't it kind of cool that we're using this part of the animal that is not otherwise used that much, or is it actually used in other cultures as food or otherwise?
So I've done some sort of I guess you could say personal projects on this podcast and on my blog about bully sticks and trying to answer these questions as best as I can figure out. I've interviewed bully stick purveyors on this podcast, and then kind of a sub sub in interest has become bully stick holders because there's this entire category of product that is pretty new, like I would say only really a couple years old, that are all about figuring out ways to keep dogs from swallowing bull penis. Things that you, I joke that this is a category of things that you stuff a bull penis in that are not cows, but that are designed to to keep our dogs safe. And also in some cases make it be sort of easier for us to give these kind of gross things to our dogs.
I've interviewed now two people who have developed products that try and solve the bully stick problem, let's call it the fact that they can be swallowed and can be quite dangerous if swallowed, and both of them came at this problem from situations with their own dogs. The two products that were developed were pretty different from each other. And so I was interested a few months ago when I got an email:
Hi, Annie, I've recently come across some of your articles regarding bully sticks. Very nice articles. Yes, I am another bully stick nerd for all the reasons that are great for my dog. When I first discovered bully sticks, I purchased all the products that you have written about. Unfortunately, I found the cons far outweighed the pros. So I went back to holding the bully stick with a pair of pliers. And then I decided it was time to upend the market and build an indestructible bull stick holder that allowed the dog to consume all, but about one inch of the stick. And I wanted it to look like modern art. Do you wanna have a conversation?
And I said, absolutely. This led me to have this conversation with Susan Mravca, who is joining me now. Susan, hi.
Susan Mravca:
I'm so happy to find there's other bully stick nerds in the country.
Annie:
I guess that's what we are. So your company is called BarkerFun and the product is called the Treat Clincher. Tell me about what this product is and why it's so different.
Susan:
When we decided to go about designing a different bully stick holder. Of course, safety was an issue. That's a given. The dog, A, had to be able to not remove it at all, no option to remove it. And, B, not get to that last inch or two at the, at the bottom. Three, they had to be able to not destroy the holder. And four, which was really important to me was I wanted it held off the ground secured in one place. So I could watch her while I went about doing emails, making lunch, I needed to keep an eye on her.
And I bought a dozen products on the market. I was absolutely convinced someone had already solved this problem. But everything that's on the market, and there's some fine products, but they all roll around in the dirt or the mud if you're outside, or in your carpets or on your sofa, if you're inside. And that was just a non-starter.
Annie:
The two products whose creators I've talked to on this show before, one kind of sits around the bully stick. It looks like a pocket, it has a hole in it, it’s one solid piece of rubber. That one is the Bully Grip. And we actually carry that at School For The Dogs. And I use it all the time with my dog. I do really like it. I find it holds the bully stick actually quite well, if you have it sized, right. I like the sort of weight of it, and it's quite sturdy, but it does roll around on the ground. I like that it's one piece.
And then we also carry the Qwizl, which is by West Paw which kind of looks like a rubber hot dog bun that you put your bully stick through. And it makes a lot of the bully stick unchewable, which is a real downside to it. So that's probably not my favorite one, but the Qwizl has other uses. And it's certainly good for that. And you can use some other West Paw – the Toppls. You can kind of jam a bully stick into, too. If you put two Toppls together. But those two are sort of the things that roll around.
And then the other one that I've experimented with a little bit that I liked and I interviewed its creator is called. I think it's called the everchew. And that one has like a hole that you stick a pin, a sort of plastic pin through, and that then locks on the other side. So you're kind of attaching this big green loop that is too large to be ingested. Are there any ones that you tried that are different than the ones that…
Susan:
Yeah, I tried all of those that you mentioned, and I also tried something called a bully stick companion that has a little locking mechanism on a small oval plastic piece. And then it has a rope attached that you can tie to a table leg. There's some products by Bow Wow Labs I tried as well.
Annie:
Is that also called The Dog Chits?
Susan:
Yes. Dog Chits bully stick companion. And then I tried these things from–
Annie:
Dog Chits is a funny name for our company. Isn't it?
Susan:
I have [laughs] I've started lots of companies with weird names, so I am no one to comment.
Annie:
So now, while I'm looking at Dog Chits, C H I T S, this looks like, I've never heard of this or seen this. I'm curious. It looks like a cigar cutter.
Susan:
Well, yeah, cause the end, the opposite end where the hole is cranks, like it turns, so it opens and closes that hole.
Annie:
And then it has, looks like a piece of nylon on it. So that one does sort of keep your dog in one place. Right?
Susan:
Nah, it's all over the dirt. You know, it just rolls around on – well, if you put it on a kitchen chair, you know, you could keep it on the tile floor.
Annie:
Well, I also think a dog left alone could probably chew through this nylon. But anyway, go ahead. I was just curious. Cause that's one I hadn't heard of. I have tried the Bow Wow Lab ones. Those are kind of like what, how would I describe them? I'm trying to figure people are listening to this. So they, it's kind of like a thimble that sits–
Susan:
A barbell. It looks like a barbell. With a hole in the middle.
Annie:
Oh yeah. You're right. Well, they had a different one in the beginning though. I think that was like a sort of thimble like that attached to the end. But right, now the one that they have is, I have one of them, it's a quite heavy barbell that your thing screws into. It's a heavy thing.
Susan:
Well, but it, the plastic bothered me cause like, I won't buy any toys or products made with plastic anymore. There's too many articles about the toxic chemicals in the plastics.
Annie:
But you also wanted to make a design object.
Susan:
Annie, I wanted to buy a product that worked! That would've been the best solution. But all of these things I tried and with varying degrees of – nothing worked because it rolled around on the ground or in the dirt. Some of them marginally held the stick. Some of them came in so many different sizes, you had to buy multiples to figure out which one fit your sticks and dogs.
But in the end, these are just bully stick holders. And I wanted a treat holder for hard treats that went beyond just bully sticks. So you had a multifunctional device. And the design piece kind of came in as a process.
So when I started to design this, and this just goes back to my – I'm an entrepreneur and I've been building companies and solving problems for a very long time. This is actually my eighth business. And my first pet business. But as an entrepreneur, it doesn't matter whether you know dogs or pet treat holders. What matters was, there's a problem that needs to be solved and clearly there's a problem because look at all these products on the market to hold a bully stick.
So when I embarked on this endeavor, it was about, okay, let's, let's build something substantial that the dog cannot destroy. That is one size for all size dogs that is held securely off the ground. And that's where it started. And then as I started to work on this and I, and honestly my first year, I spent trying to make a mold to pour plastic. And I had the mold done and I worked with many mold manufacturers. And in the end, every plastic sample that I received, my dog was able to destroy.
And I thought, well, this is a non-starter. I mean, I don't want a bunch of hate mail because if my dog can eat through a piece of plastic, there are others that will too. So then I decided to move towards more sustainable materials like aluminum. Now I gotta tell you nobody's ever made aluminum dog products. Like, this is a first.
And so I went down this path because I decided if we're gonna do this, let's just break some barriers and design a treat holder that is multifunctional. So it's gonna hold more than bully sticks cause not everybody gives their dogs bully sticks. But if it's held off the ground, that’s the uniqueness that no one has, I can put it on a picnic table. I have it on the end of my stairs. I have one in my car. We take it to every restaurant. We go to every coffee shop. I can now take my dog with me everywhere I go, because I can set her up with a bully stick for an hour, or a yak stick.
And then it's actually kind of fun going out now because there's always somebody that comes by to take a picture or find out what it is. And I hear endlessly, gosh, I would take my dog out more often if I could keep her occupied.
Annie:
So to someone who hasn't seen this thing, I'd like to attempt to describe it.
Susan:
Go ahead.
Annie:
From one angle, it looks kind of like a metal brick with two screws, one on each end, two big brass-like, nobby ended screws and a hole cutout, sort of how I would describe it. Big black brick. I'm looking at the black one, big black brick with these golden nobby things, one on the top, on the side. And one on the side, on the side.
Susan:
One side has that clamp that will attach to a table leg or a fence post.
Annie:
And it says BarkerFun on it. But I have to tell you out of context, if I had no idea that this was a dog product, even though it has the word Barker, which could relate to someone named Barker, I don't think I would have any clue what this was for.
Susan:
It looks like a piece of modern art.
Annie:
I'll be – from this angle at least, I'm not sure I would say it was art. I think I would just have no clue. I think, I mean, would it be art, would it be some kind of clamp? I think my guess would be, it would be some kind of clamp for building purposes.
And in the other angle, the second picture that is here kind of looks like art, cause now I'm seeing it from what would be the top if it was clamped to a table. I could see now that I understand what the thing is. And from that angle, it looks like it does actually kind of look like art because it looks sort of like, to me, like a man figure doing knee push ups with like this big gold head.
Then scrolling through. Of course now we have pictures of it in its use, and suddenly it becomes clear what it is. So looking at this picture, explaining to someone what it does, saying, “and it costs over $200,” I think someone would say, couldn't you just buy a clamp? Like put together two different clamps from the hardware store that would do something similar?
Susan:
So I actually tried to do that. I bought all the clamps that Home Depot had. And that didn't work either, because some of it was the clamp that had on the table leg or the fence posts. They did not have enough adaptability, or they were damaging to the table leg. My clamps have pads on them. So even fine furniture, you can put the clamp. On the other side where the bully stick gets clamped in, or the bone, there were no devices in the hardware store that would actually secure – it was no better than any of the products on the market in actually securing the stick.
So a big part of our design, and it is hard to describe. The area on the Treat Clincher that holds the treat looks like a little, it's a little square. It's about a two inch square. The bottom side, we call a multidimensional inverted pyramid.
Annie:
It's shaped like a ziggurat.
Susan:
Yeah, there you go. You can wiggle in different sizes of treats. And then the bolt that comes down on the bully stick has a point on it. And we actually tested many different angles of points. So when you clamp this down, the point buries into the bully stick, so it cannot be – you'll see videos of the dogs on our Instagram, they'll try to go on both sides to pull it out. This is such a great brain exercise. They try to remove it. And you can't because the point buries itself into the bully stick.
And so, and I've got the toughest chewer possible. She'll get it down to about two inches to come and get me to say, can you move it over so I can get a little bit more. But she can't get out that treat. And then I move it over and she gets it down to probably about an inch or less. And, and then I remove it. Then I usually throw away that last little piece.
Annie:
The Bully Grips that we sell are 20 ish dollars. For something meant to be in contact with this dried animal body part meant to consumed by dogs and meant to be enclosed contact with dog teeth, functional, larger things like crates or functional, larger things like bags or they think in terms of luxury that probably has very little to do with a dog, like, you know, a design designer bag or designer leash. But I'm talking about things that are really about dog enrichment and, and functionally creating homes that are best for a dog. I think crates and bags are kind of where people spend money. So I'm wondering if people are gonna spend money on this.
Susan:
A Treat Clincher will buy you hundreds and hundreds of hours of personal time while your dog is with you quiet and completely occupied. This product is really not for the dog. The Treat Clincher for me. I'm the center of attention in the solution to this product. And all I need to do is take care of one sale in a Zoom call or talk to my boss for an hour, or, you know, have some calm time to read my emails, and I win. I get some Zen time. I can do a yoga class. I can go jog.
The product is for me to be with my dog at the same time. And that's a concept that I think through COVID people now understand because their dogs are driving 'em crazy, but yet we all love our dogs. So how do you spend time with your dog and get the quality peaceful time that you need? That's what the Treat Clincher is for. Your payback is in a week.
You know, people are smart, and anybody who has had dogs or multiple dogs, you will hear endlessly how they're tired of replacing the dog products. Constantly, you know, 30 dollars, 30 dollars. It adds up. And they're dangerous, or they're plastic or they're rubber, or they don't work.
And so this, the Treat Clincher is not for everyone, but it's for the bully stick nerds and people who appreciate the enrichment aspect of a dog trying to remove a treat from a fixed object. Versus having it roll around on the ground is just giving it some food. Putting it in a Treat Clincher creates brain activity. And it's a really amazing enrichment tool.
And that's not coming from me. The Hinsdale Humane Society in Illinois has been using these in their kennels. They won't let anything roll around on the ground. They won't let any plastic toys in there. So we're installing them in special places and on the walls for them. And their words are, the enrichment is remarkable. The dogs calm down. They will be adopted faster because they're not barking endlessly. They become a little bit more acclimated to their new home and kennel.
That translates to your house as well. If you don't want your dog tearing up your furniture or tearing up your carpets, you need to give – dogs want a job. They need something to do. And giving your dog a very enriching brain activity exhausts them. It doesn't have to be physical running around the yard.
The people that have bought the Treat Clincher, if I tried to take them back, it's not happening. I get regular emails saying, thank you so much for inventing this. This one woman, and we did a video of her. She's got three Italian greyhounds. She could not do a one hour exercise class during this whole pandemic, and she had a whole host of so-called enrichment things that would last five minutes at a time. Now she can put two Italian greyhounds on one bully stick in the Treat Clincher, and she gets three hours of quiet time.
Annie:
You also mentioned that people use it or that you have at least one client who uses it for actual, like uncooked raw bones,
Susan:
Steak bones, raw bones. And of course Paola, she's like not happening in the house.
Annie:
The dog is named Paola?
Susan:
No, Paola and Ken are the couple that own the dog Red. Yeah. Red is the dog. He's a giant, Wirehaired Pointing Griffon. He's a clown. And, they would like the dog in the house with them having these treats, but they couldn't do it until they found the Treat Clincher. So we did a video of them as well, and they regularly use bones and they've got it secured in one area in their house.
And they alternate bones, bully sticks. It keeps the dog with them right near the family room. So they are the ones that turn me on to bones. So now I do that once in a while as well. So there you go. It's not just bully sticks. The variety of adding a bone in there gives your dog a different brain activity.
Annie:
And, keep referring to the design aspect and that you wanted it to look like modern art. I mean, you succeeded in a kind of I guess you could say subjective way in that you just won this award.
Susan:
The Good Design award is a really big deal. It's the oldest and most prestigious awards program in the world. I mean, it's for people doing innovation and cutting edge products. People have design teams. You know who wins this award? Ferrari, Google, Oxo. I mean, architects that have international offices. Loll, the outdoor furniture manufacturer. These are big prestigious design team companies.
Annie:
Now, you created it with your brother.
Susan:
This is another interesting aspect. So this is a brother-sister team. And when I started to discover what the problem was, and I started looking for a solution, and I'm in Austin, he's in Silicon valley. I knew if I really wanted to make this product sustainable and beautiful, out of some material that could not be destroyed, I needed a world class engineer. And I needed somebody who did a lot of product design in a non pet industry. Cause that to me was our winning Ace was thinking out of the box.
So of course, who do I call is my brother. And I presented this problem to him. And he works on wireless patents and DOD products.
Annie:
From, from a design perspective?
Susan:
Yes, yes. Stuff that we wouldn't even know exists. He designs products for the government. And when I told him what I'm doing, he's oh my gosh, this is gonna be so much fun. And so I would make drawings. I would get all these products that exist, products from the hardware store. I would send them to him. He would turn it into CAD drawings. We'd refine it, we'd send it off and get a prototype made. And then the prototype would come to me. And then I would chop it up and change angles and send it back to him and he would change the CAD.
So this went on for a year and a half. You know, first we did it in plastic. Then we changed to metal. Then we started testing different kinds of bolts, different sizes. I probably have, I have a box here with probably a hundred different handles that angled – that flare that comes out, you know, where the treat actually gets held. So when you describe the product, it's like it's clamped on the table. There's a four inch shaft, takes it away from the table or the piece of furniture. And then it flares out.
That flare, every machinist we worked with said, well, if you flatten this out, you know, we can make it for half the price. And I was like, no, but then it's kind of ugly. And I don't want that. I mean, we could use it. That's functional, but it's certainly not pretty. And it certainly isn't gonna win a design award.
So, you know, it's like, Hey, we just went for the grand slam. We're like, okay, there's plenty of plastic products. There's plenty of rubber products. They're all marginally functional for what they do. We just went for something way out on the edge. Look, everybody talks about made in America, sustainable. Okay, we got it. This is made in America.
Annie:
So the current retail cost is $229. The product has been around for about a year. It's still very new. And I am excited that we are gonna start offering these for sale at storeforthedogs.com. Next Friday on Instagram, we are going to do a giveaway of a Treat Clincher and the first five people who listen to this episode and use the code SUSAN at checkout at storeforthedogs.com for the Treat Clincher will get 30 dollars off making it $199 for the first five people who buy one of these between now and the end of next week.
I am also going to make sure that we have some on display for people who are curious at our store on E 7th and 1st.
Susan:
I wanna hear from those people because –
Annie:
Yeah, yeah, me too. I'm curious what people will think it is for. And I'm curious if people are willing to spend this amount of money for something which I think, you know, I am admittedly maybe not great with money, but I'm very good at amortizing things over the course of my dog's life. So something's $230. I figure, will this be worth $23 a year for me for the next 10 years?
Susan:
But wait a minute, it's good for a hundred.
Annie:
But I'm thinking about in terms of my dog's life.
Susan:
We need to somehow promote that this is a generational product. You will hand this down to your kids’ dogs. Can you even think of another dog accessory that you would have as something you'd wanna hand down to your kids?
Annie:
No. Especially not a product to hold the dried out penis of a bull. No.
[laughing]
But, I believe that it has a use, which is to hold the dried out penis of a bull, that is valuable and make my dog and my daughter's future dogs –
Susan:
We're gonna change people's ideas on how dog products should be made. And I think we're gonna make people up their game in materials and function.
[music]
Annie:
Again, you can find the clincher at schoolforthedogs.com/clincher. As always, if you like this podcast, please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review. And hey, drop me a line. I would love to hear from you, annie@schoolforthedogs.com. And if you are in New York City, you should definitely come by. We have a really great selection of enrichment toys – snuffle mats, treats made of every organ you can imagine. And vegan treats too. And we will have the Treat Clincher there on display for you to check out in person. We're located at 92 E 7th street.
