30 OctEpisode 90 | Recycled treats and retractable leashes: The good, the bad, and the hilarious
In this episode, you'll learn about two products, each invented by a woman. The first is something you've probably encountered: the retractable leash. The second is a new brand of treats called Shameless Pets, which makes yummy stuff for dogs from pre-consumer food waste. The former can be quite dangerous, but Annie suggests a way to make it safer; the latter is a successful version of a Seinfeld-esque business plan that Annie's neighbor came up with in the 1990s. In between tips about using a retractable leash and the story of Shameless Pets, you'll hear a hilarious piece of standup by comedian Drew Lynch.
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Transcription:
Annie:
Do you need some help teaching your dog where you want him to pee or poop, and when? If so, I hope you'll check out our brand new totally free house training guide. You can find it at schoolforthedogs.com/house. It's filled with lots of really good tips on how to train a dog to potty in the right spot. But it also is going to explain to you how to teach your dog to do it on cue. So go check it out. Schoolforthedogs.com/house.
[Intro music]
Hi, thanks for being here, humans. There are two parts to this episode. One part is about retractable leashes and the other part is a conversation I had with Alex Waite, who is one of the founders of Shameless, which is a really cool brand of treats that you're going to learn a lot about. They're doing things differently in a very interesting way.
Just a reminder that if you liked this podcast, please go to iTunes and leave a review and support us by shopping in our online store storeforthedogs.com. I think we have the greatest stuff in the world there, for people who love their dogs. Enjoy.
So here's something you might not know if you've never worked with a dog trainer or you don't hang out with dog trainers. Most dog trainers, at least the ones that I know, don't like retractable leashes. And there are a bunch of reasons for this. For one, we want our dogs to ideally be walking on a loose leash. I always say a leash should be there the same way a seatbelt is in a car. You don't wear the seatbelt and then feel like, okay, now I can drive like a madman. It's there in case of an emergency.
Ideally your dog should be able to walk in a vicinity that is acceptable, but the leash should be there in case of an emergency. And if you have a leash that is always taut, your dog can get used to feeling that the leash has to have some kind of pull on him at all times. So often dogs on retractable leashes are dogs who have learned to pull.
Another reason is that the cord that attaches the class to the plastic chunky part of the retractable leash is very thin. And if you, if you get it wound around a finger or your leg or a dog, it can really do some damage. Actually, if you go to Google and you start typing in retractable leash, at least on my computer, the first suggested thing that comes up for you to be Googling is retractable leash injuries. Thanks to the magic of Google images, you can see what retractable leash injuries look like, and they're pretty awful.
Another reason that they can be dangerous is because they — I assume if you're listening, you know what retractable leashes look like. But to those who might not, it's like this big, chunky plastic thing attached to — that has like a — I'm not doing a very good job. It's a big clunky plastic thing that has a spindled, Is that a word, spindled cord inside of it that is retractable with a clasp on the end.
And if you would picture that the clasp was attached to your dog and you let go of the leash, it's going to hurdle to your dog, I guess, unless you have a small dog in which I guess the dog could hurdle towards the plastic handle. I'm not sure of the physics of it, but also not a good thing. And that can be really terrifying to a dog and potentially of course, just really super dangerous.
So these are just some of the reasons why dog trainers don't typically like retractable leashes. Oh, you know, another thing that I don't like about it takes up your whole hand. So you can't really do very much with your hand.
I like the opposite. Like I like having a hands-free leash, waist leash, something that leaves my hands open, because then I can move my dog around with a hand touch. I can use treats. It's just really freeing to not have to use your hands when you're walking your dog all the time. And the retractable leash is going to completely occupy one hand.
Anyway, I have to admit however that I recently bought a retractable leash to use with my dog for a very specific reason. And I just wanted to share this as, I think I can offer a little bit of a hack in case you are going to use a retractable leash for this reason I bought it so that I could walk my dog while pushing my toddler in her stroller, because I found that when I used just sort of his regular long leash, we have a Found my Animal leash, which is long enough for me to wear around my waist.
I found if I wore it around my waist, or if I had it in my hand while I was pushing the stroller, it was just a lot more likely to get caught up in the wheel of the stroller. And it just felt a little bit hard to manage outside on the busy streets of New York. But I thought about it and thought, you know, if he was on a leash that we're always taught, then it would never be dragging on the ground. So I got a very small retractable leash to try with him. I like small leashes. So I think, you know, the smaller, the better.
But here's my simple little hack. I attached another leash around the cord part and held the end of that leash at the same time. So it's taut when he is walking and I'm not too worried about him, you know, learning to pull because of this, because he has a lot of years of not walking this way under his belt. I think he's got it down.
But the leash that is looped basically to the thin cord and then attached just at my wrist is gonna keep the big plastic handle part from ever snapping and going towards him. If I were to let go of it, or if anyone were to let go of it, I actually do let Magnolia, my daughter walk Amos. Sometimes it's like her favorite thing in the world. She would like to walk every dog on the street.
What's crazy is like, she's so interested in dogs and people's leashes and people will actually hand her their leashes and be like, do you want to walk my dog? And I'm like, are you crazy? She's not even two, No, do not let her walk your dog. I do, however, let her walk our little 18 pound dog Amos, but I do it in this way where I let her hold the big clunky retractable leash handle. Well, relatively small, cause I got the small one, but I'm holding the leash that is attached to it. So if she lets go, it's going to catch on the leash that I'm holding way before it goes towards Amos.
Anyway, it's worked out pretty well. She's thrilled to get to hold the leash here. He's happy that he has some room to move around where he's not forced to be near the stroller where there's a chance of the leash or pause getting under the wheels. And, so yeah, that's my tip on using retractable leash, use a second leash.
So I was thinking about this the other day and thinking I should mention on the podcast that this is a way to use a retractable leash in a safer way. And, lo and behold, like an hour later, I got an email from a podcast listener in Austin. Her name is Lolania. She has a company called Dog People and Bark. She said, I saw this hilarious clip from this comedian, named Drew Lynch. He stutters because of a softball accident he had. Anyway, it's all about retractable leashes. And I thought you'd like it. So yeah, this is the comedian Drew Lynch on retractable leashes.
Drew Lynch:
I walk my dog on, on, on, on a, on a regular leash. Not the retractable leash. If you don't know what a retractable leash is, it is basically a tape measure that you attach to your dog to measure how shitty of an owner you are.
But you know, don't worry if your dog wanders too far there is a button you can press to choke it, so.
Yeah, me and my dog, we have a safe word, but you do whatever.
That's true.
Have you ever seen a dog walk on one of those things? It has no idea its on a leash. It's always a 300 foot radius ahead of the owner tripping innocent civilians as it crushes its windpipe in the process. Every, every, every little dog I see on retractable leash, is always
[imitates frantic dog]
That's probably how pugs were invented. To be honest. That's what happened. A French bulldog. Went for a retractable leash walk, lost air, and his eyes popped from its sockets! Pug!
Sometimes I’ll see dogs that are smaller than the leash itself. And that is something I cannot get behind. There was this one time I was back home in Los Angeles. I was walking my dog on a regular leash, and on a retractable leash I saw this Chihuahua that was walking its lady.
And the Chihuahua charged at my dog. Okay. And from a kilometer away, I say kilometer because this was in Canada. The lady pressed the button. I am not exaggerating the Chihuahua went [screams].
[laughter]
I could have saved him, but the portal was closed. It was too late. That dog belongs to the past now. I’d never seen a chihuahua zipline before.That was adorable. No, no helmet. I hope he signed the terms and conditions.
I thought that was the end of the exchange. And then tell the lady and I crossed paths about an hour later. She did get through customs. And she was apologizing profusely. She was like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My chihuahua is just a bit overly friendly. I was like, yeah, you're yo-yo is aggressive.
She was like, well, I don't understand the problem here. I was like, here's the problem here, is thank God my dog is not also aggressive because she is much bigger than your dog. And if, when your dog charged, my dog had charged, it would have just ate this chihuahua. You would have then pressed the button and just caught my dog.
[laughing]
You can't be fishing for bigger breeds out here. It's illegal, I think.
The lady's like, well, I like my dog to have freedom for when we go on walks. And I was like, yeah, but in the city it's a bit too much freedom. Wouldn’t you say? Here's an example. We're talking, your dog is across the street right now. About to closeline an SUV. It's red Rover, send the range Rover over. It's not gonna go good.
[laughter]
The lady’s, like, well, since you so adamantly disagree with the invention, why don't you take it up with the inventor? Who's who's still alive by the way, her name's Mary Delaney in case you wanted to know.
I was like I did not. But I can see how that makes sense. I think a woman could invent something with the illusion of “Go, be free–Sike!”
I did that joke one time and a guy came up to me after a show, visibly upset. I was like I didn’t much appreciate that retractable leash bit. I walk my dog on a retractable leash. I was like I know, you’re holding one. I met your dog ten minutes ago. He’s probably home by now. So.
And the guy was like, it just didn't make for a very good end to the night. And I was like, look, man, everything I say up here is this, this, this is lighthearted, is meant to be to taken in jest and not too seriously. But if I did say something that has sincerely upset you, then I would like to apologize. I'm sorry. And I take it back.
And the guy was like, well the damage is already done man. You can’t just take it back. And I was like, sure, I can. It’s retractable.
Annie:
I actually looked up Mary Delaney’s patent for the original retractable leash. It's pretty cool. I will link to it in the show notes. It looks nothing like any retractable leash I've ever seen before. And I'm pretty sure Mary Delaney is not actually still alive as the patent was filed in 1908.
[music]
I've told you about a product I don't like, about its inventor. Now I'm going to tell you about a product I do like, and I'm going to share it with you a conversation with one of its inventors, Alex Waite. I started my conversation with her sharing a story from my childhood about someone else who had a similar idea.
Annie:
So growing up, I had this neighbor who was kind of eccentric and kind of like a Kramer character from Seinfeld and that he would have kind of crazy ideas sometimes. And he got very serious at one point, maybe it was like in the nineties, with this crazy idea that he was going to go to all the finest restaurants in New York City and collect all of their scrap food and turn it into very high end dog food.
Alex Waite:
Outrageous these days.
Annie:
Right. Well right. But it was such a hilarious idea and such a bad idea, but like such a perfect combo of like hilarious and bad because you know, of course you can't — like, think about all the like cream sauces and like, it wouldn't be like a balanced diet. But of course, well dogs did probably evolve to eat our waste.
But anyway, I kind of forgot about that until I was shopping where we buy our treats from, one of these wholesale sites. And this was a few weeks ago and I saw just something about, you know, these treats are upcycled. And I thought, what does that mean? I have to learn more. So I started reading a little bit about what you're doing, and it reminded me of this story of my neighbor. But it was like, Oh, wait, somebody actually maybe figured out how to do this right.
So tell me what the idea is and what the origins of the idea are.
Alex:
Yeah. So, that's an awesome story. I think we definitely source unused food, but from a pre-consumer place so that we can create a food safe environment for the material that goes into our products. But we started Shameless Pets about three years ago. My background is actually in food product development. I was developing human food in the organic, natural food industry for I think eight years before starting Shameless Pets.
Annie:
Like what kinds of foods?
Alex:
Yeah, so I was a director of R and D for Mary's Gone Crackers.
Annie:
Oh, I love those. They’re delish.
Alex:
They make organic and allergen friendly snack food items. So, I started fresh out of grad school with Mary. She was working in the kitchen and just didn't want to do it any longer. So I was able to step into her shoes and learn through how she creates food products, which is usually, it's always using whole foods, whole ingredients and really clean labeled food. So it was fun to learn hands-on in that process. And then take my knowledge and start applying it to our pet products here.
Annie:
You said you had gotten a master's, what did you get a master's in to lead up to that?
Alex:
Yeah, I got a master's in nutrition education. My background is nutrition food science, and strangely enough exercise physiology. So, took my science nerdy background and applied it to food.
Annie:
So then what got you guys thinking about making a pet food? Or a pet treat, I should say.
Alex:
Yeah, so I was living in Boston at the time where I met my co-founder James, and he comes from a retail background. So he was a senior buyer at Target, and he worked in their food innovation lab and he was working on concepts on circular agriculture. And meanwhile, I had always really admired the upcycle movement. So upcycling started a few years ago in the CPG space where companies were working on solutions for the massive food waste problem that we have.
And so him and I came together and just had a shared passion for creating a mission based organization. And I'm a proud dog mom, myself. So, just my dogs are just a big inspiration for me and the creation of these foods, and creating something that is a clean labeled ingredient, whole food based product for our pets.
Annie:
Circular. What did you call it? Circular agriculture.
Alex:
Agriculture. Yeah. So, it's looking at all aspects of the supply chain and learning about how to create efficiencies to prevent waste. So one thing kind of leads into another leads into another leads into another, to complete a closed loop system where no waste or little waste exists.
Annie:
So is that a goal for any kind of food? Like what would be an example?
Alex:
I think for him at the time he was looking at, for instance, in retail, where on the store shelves, they waste a lot of food product, which is one of the locations where food waste occurs.
Annie:
Yeah. I always think like, like the food stand at this place near my house, they have, you know, 80 lemons on view. It's not like they sell 80. It's not like at the end of the day, there's only one lemon left.
Alex:
No, exactly. And that's just one of the areas. So looking at, why does waste occur in this space? Why is it that we need to have 80 lemons on display rather than only what we need to sell? And if it were such that waste is going to occur, what is it that we can do with that waste to prevent it from, for that extra, from being a total waste?
Annie:
How are, how are, how is shameless part of creating a closed loop?
Alex:
Yeah, so if you look at where food waste occurs, it occurs in lots of places of the supply chain, starting at the farm level and going all the way to the consumer level, where at the farm something might get wasted because it doesn't quite look the right way. So if you look at the retail store shelves, you'll see that all the sweet potatoes are really pretty good looking, or they're not the giant sweet potatoes that they can grow to if they're not picked at the right time, or maybe it's an apple that has a blemish on it. These are the reasons why food and agriculture gets wasted.
Another reason could be for an overproduction, due to, for instance, in this COVID circumstance where food was funneling to the food service industries where lots of food goes to — a school cafeterias or to sporting events. Now that food doesn't have a home. So it was over produced for the need that was at the time.
And then food also gets wasted in transportation. So taking food from one location to another, it also gets wasted at the processing level. I use this example because it's relevant to us, but the zucchini noodles or the butternut squash noodles that you see on the grocery store shelves, like they get spiralized and they get put into this package onto the, to the store shelves. Well, that doesn't get grown that way. So what happens to the rest of that butternut squash that didn't necessarily get to be the right length of spiral? Or maybe it's just the, the cut of that, that doesn't, doesn't meet the, like the noodle specification.
Annie:
The imperfect noodle.
Alex:
The imperfect noodle. Exactly. So, yeah. And then that's exactly it. So that's one reason on a processing level, or maybe like a cut of meat or cut up cheese that didn't necessarily get to the right specification. Maybe it's a little too fatty or maybe it's not the right color. There's reasons why food gets wasted at the processing level.
And then I already talked about the retail level, which is the grocery store shelves. And then the consumer at home is another level where consumers don't necessarily — they either buy too much food. They don't meal prep properly. They leave a little bit on their plate because they're on a diet or something of that nature, they don't eat their leftovers. Those are reasons why food at home, and even expiration dates on food. Like not really understanding when the best by date could be. That's a reason why food would get lost at home.
So, at Shameless Pets we started to look at the reasons in the beginning of the supply chain. So for example, at the agriculture level, like the imperfect produce. Or the processing level, like the butternut squash noodles that I mentioned, lots of little pieces that aren't the right size or shape. We started looking at those aspects and wondering how we could incorporate those into a product that could be nutritious and actually enjoyed by our pets. And so that's what we've done is working at the pre-consumer level to create these finished goods, which are the dog treats that we sell.
Annie:
So interesting. And now there's some pretty wild flavors that you've come up with. Were the flavors led by what's available, or the other way around?
Did you have the flavors in mind first? Well, why don't you talk about a couple of the flavors?
We only just got them in. So I haven't had the chance to taste test them yet with very many dogs, but I picked them by their names.
Alex:
Yeah. A lot of people do. We had a good time naming them, but yeah, I like to create food that sounds appealing. I would say to us as humans, as a pet company, we're selling dog treats. So we want to make sure that they're nutritious and they're good for the dog first and foremost. And all the ingredients are ingredients that would provide some nutritional benefit for the pet. But also as humans, we are the ones that are buying the treats. And so we want to make these treats appeal to the human senses as well.
So when I make a flavor, I'm thinking, Hmm, what sounds good to me? Like, what's something that I could envision myself eating that's really like nostalgic, like our peanut butter bacon banana, like the Elvis treat that we made, or is it just like a blueberry mint, which for me is reminiscent of a milky dough or something, something that would be what I would enjoy to eat myself. And also, like I said, provides the health and nutrition that, that pets also need.
Annie:
You're answering the question by saying you came up with the flavors first.
Alex:
Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes, we could be inspired by an ingredient that comes our way. Like I can say that I'm working on a jerky recipe right now that incorporates salmon skins. And that was an opportunity that came about through a conversation with a retailer who was having an issue with their waste and didn't have a home for salmon skins. And salmon skins are actually really healthy and beneficial for pets. They provide a lot of omegas for their skin and coat health. So we worked with that retailer, as an example, to incorporate that salmon skin into a new jerky flavor that we're working on right now.
Annie:
That’s really cool. And you have lobster treats, which I'd never seen before.
Alex:
Yeah, we do. And that was actually one of our first flavors that we launched. Being in New England at the time, I was definitely inspired by the region.
Annie:
Well, so how does, what is the lobster waste? Is it the shells ground up? Is it the, what people don’t eat cause they can't pick it out with that tiny little fork?
Alex:
It's actually everything basically but the claws and the body of the lobster. So it's still the protein and the organ meat even actually provides healthy fats as well. But yeah, it does incorporate the shell, which is actually a natural source of glucosamine and chondroitin. So it acts like a shrimp shell. Sometimes we'll put shrimp shells in the dogs meals as well. But it's ground up. So it's super, super fine. And it acts like a flour in the recipe. So there's not any choking hazards or anything like if you were to throw like a shell at a dog, but everything's super finely ground. So it's easy to eat.
Annie:
I'm just curious. You decided you want to start a like dog treat company, and where are you guys based?
Alex:
We're in Chicago.
Annie:
Like, what is the first step? Like, I want to have a dog treat company. Like, do you need funding? You need recipes.
Alex:
Yeah. So I started with recipes in my kitchen just being a product developer and having that experience. I know how to make a product from scratch. So from taking an idea and then figuring out what is it that I need to do in order to make this scalable, which is made in a factory for the full scale recipes. But that's definitely first step is having these recipes that we put together.
We obviously had to create a brand and it was something that we worked on as a team. We have another founder, his name is Mike, Mike Lucas. He came in and helped us specifically on the branding work and how we thought about the flavor names and the colors and even our logo and what that meant and the claims and things like that.
Annie:
How did you come up with the name Shameless?
Alex:
Have you ever heard of pet shaming?
Annie:
Yes.
Alex:
Yeah. So I always, I thought it was hilarious. I loved seeing these funny dogs that are just getting into trouble and doing things unbeknownst to them. That they were being these little buggers. And like, I just love that about pets and how they are in fact shameless in their behavior and who they are. And I think it's something that I personally even aspire to and find a lot of joy out of as well.
Annie:
What was your inspiration then for the packaging? Or how would you describe the packaging to someone who hasn't seen it?
Alex:
So the packaging is —
Annie:
Or I should say, How would you describe the rest of the brand, I guess to someone?
Alex:
Sure. The brand is, I would say it's colorful. We use a lot of vibrant colors and paired with white. So it's that white base with that pop of color. Each flavor has its own color scheme with that vibrant color. We actually recently rebranded our logo. So I think we took — it's technically the upcycled symbol with the dog kind of popping out sheepishly, having like this mischievous look on his face. We transitioned from that triangle kind of upcycle to more of a U. So it's just a little bit, I would say more modern looking which is something we did very recently.
All of our original products were biscuits. They're soft baked biscuits. And so we recently transitioned our packaging to be more — we realized that we didn't put on the front of pack, like, what is this? Right? Like it didn't say soft baked biscuits very clearly, it said it on the bottom, but we put it more clearly on the front of pack as well. Because now we have jerky and we have dental sticks and other product lines.
All of our products are grain-free all natural. We have no artificial flavors or colors. You can read the ingredients really easily. You're not like, Oh, what's that?
Annie:
I'm looking at it as we're talking. I really like your packaging. I love the little cartoons that you have, and the logo is a super cute hand drawn dog.
Alex:
Yeah. We did icons on the front of the pack so you can see, like, what are the couple of different ingredients that are really distinct to that flavor? Like my dog likes sweet potato, or, Hey, this lobster, it's different. It's unique. I haven't seen it. Let's try it kind of thing.
Annie:
I've also, I've never seen lobster treats, they're called lobster roll over flavor. But I've also never seen egg treats. Tell me about the break an egg flavor.
Alex:
Yeah. It was one of our original flavors. I wanted to make an alternative protein type product. Eggs are actually a really great source of protein for our pets and for us as humans, I personally eat eggs every day. I love them. So I just decided that I wanted to make alternative protein type products for our pets if someone wanted that option.
Annie:
And so what has the response been from both dogs and humans?
Alex:
Yeah. So dogs love our treats. I would say that it is very, very rare when we have the feedback that their dog doesn't like a treat. It does happen very, very rarely, but if it does, we always offer another flavor or give them a refund, we always guarantee our products. But so far dogs have been really excited about pretty much any flavor. I would say lobster rollover is the showstopper, if people haven't seen it before, or they like that it has glucosamine and chondroitin in it for older dogs.
So far the texture is a really big hit. They're nice and soft, but they also don't crumble. So they can be broken into small pieces for training, or you can put them in your pocket when you go on a walk, things like that.
I would say retailers, or at least stores are really excited about the concept and really like the upcycle movement. They also are starting to want to be a part of it. So having those conversations, like that salmon skin as an example, seems to be happening more frequently where, where retailers really want to be a part of that upcycling change.
But yeah, so far so good. I mean, we've launched, in the past two and a half years since having product. Even shorter than that, I would say two years that we've had like a finished product to have on shelves. We're in about 2,500 stores nationwide, and we're launching with even Costco regions this month. So we're growing fairly quickly. And it seems like people are resonating with the sustainable mission of our products.
Annie:
Well, that's very cool. And we now have them at our shop in the East Village in Manhattan and also at our online store, storeforthedogs.com. And are there other companies in the dog treat world or dog food world that you feel like are also doing cool things?
Alex:
Yeah. I think Open Farm has really amazing sustainability focused type food and products. I've always been a fan of what they're doing.
Annie:
I don't know them. What do they make?
Alex:
They make a whole line of food and they make treats, I believe as well. They have basically like a whole line of product. I believe they're a Canadian based brand, but they have really admirable high quality standards. So I think that that's great. I think that there's interesting companies doing — even bond pet foods, for example, they are basically creating a chicken that is grown rather than an overall chicken. So they're starting to do experimentation on basically lab grown meat to take the place of actual chicken farms and bee farms and things like that.
So it's definitely cutting edge and something worth looking at, I know people probably have a, a wide range of opinions about that, but I think that it's something that in terms of sustainability is really an interesting avenue to consider for pet products.
Annie:
And probably will happen with dogs before it happens for us. I'm guessing.
Alex:
Yeah, I believe so. I'll say in the next few years, I'm sure that they'll have a finished product to check out. I like the alternative. I like the sustainable focused brands. I think that's the wave of the future and where products need to head in order to just keep going.
Annie:
Yeah. Well thank you so much for talking. I think this is so interesting. Also it's part of what's interesting about it is like I said, when we started talking, we think dogs very likely evolved to eat our waste. And so it's sort of like an interesting modern take on how to do that in a thoughtful, responsible way.
Alex:
Yeah, definitely. Thank you for that feedback. And I think we can work together, both our pets and us to create a more sustainable future.
Annie:
Yeah, yeah. And it's, but what's so kind of interesting about it. It's like, do you know the theory about dog evolution that has to do with them eating waste?
Alex:
Yeah. So weren't they like at first initially, I mean they evolve from wolves and they —
Annie:
Well the theory. And it's talked about, the book Dogs by Ray and Lorna Coppinger has a great chapter on it. And you know, I think it's a theory that maybe has been criticized, but basically it makes sense to me when the idea is that like, dogs started to evolve from wolves because around the time when we started having settlements and not being not being so nomadic, and when we started settling, we started having dogs. And it was the wolves that were like the least fearful that would sort of benefit calorically from eating our wasted food from the dumps. And of course it would benefit us to have animals to get rid of some of that waste for us.
That, you know, over, not that many, a couple of dozen generations, this natural selection happened of the wolves getting basically friendlier and less and less fearful. Simply based on the fact that you know, the ones who were least fearful were the ones who would benefit most from the food and not have to be hunting and scavenging and whatever. And I think up until 150 years ago, there was no such thing as commercial dog food. Dogs would just eat what we were getting rid of. But I guess we've now come to a new point in that, with what you're doing in a really interesting way.
My dog licks my plate. He does the rinse cycle.
[laughs]
Alex:
Yeah my dog does too. My dog loves veggie scraps. So when we're cooking, chopping vegetables, we give them the little ends of the zucchini or the little tops of the bell peppers, because they absolutely love them. They basically can't distinguish them from any other treats. So, I love that. I love giving a handful of bell peppers and watching them have a really good time.
Annie:
I have to ask, have you tried any of your treats?
Alex:
I did. I did try our treats.
Annie:
Are any of them particularly delicious?
Alex:
I would say the blueberry and mint is probably the most familiar to us. It tastes like a cookie that's not very sweet. So we don't add any sugar to them, so it's very like a mild cookie.
Annie:
Picking your ingredients. I mean, what is it like picking ingredients for a dog? Were you trying to like to create limited ingredient treats? You said you wanted to not include wheat right?
Alex:
Right. Yeah. They're free of wheat, corn. Yeah. And artificial ingredients, like any other flavorings really. It's just, if it's blueberry and it's mint, it's coming from blueberry and it's actual mint leaf rather than any artificial flavorings.
Annie:
Is there one key ingredient to getting like the kind of nice texture that you're describing and treats where you can break them up? I mean, without getting them to crumble.
Alex:
Yeah, we use sunflower as a base in our treats. It provides a lot of, actually nutritionally it's good fiber, good healthy fats. So it's been pressed so it's lower fat than like any sunflower that you would eat at home. So it really helps create this nice texture in our products that I think is pretty unique and people have been really people and dogs have been really enjoying.
Annie:
And sunflower. Are there benefits to sunflower for the dog?
Alex:
It's just higher in protein, lower in fat in this particular circumstance, since it's been pressed. It has a good amount of fiber, so the fiber helps keep dogs regular and keeps things together. Um, and so it acts as a digestive aid in that way as well.
Annie:
Well I've learned a lot. Thanks a lot for taking the time to talk. If you're in New York, if we can ever travel again you’ll have to stop by School for the Dogs to come say hello, and I'm excited to see — are you guys creating new products as well?
Alex:
Yeah,we actually did just launch a bunch of products. We did dental sticks. We also launched a jerky line. So I'll be working on more jerky flavors to come out later this year. And then also potentially some other flavors of our biscuits or even other types of categories next year as well.
Annie:
You can learn more about Shameless Pets at shamelesspets.com, and you can purchase shameless treats at storeforthedogs.com or at our East village location at 92 East seventh street in Manhattan.
We are currently in the process of building out an invitation only app for School for the Dogs. Fans can connect with like-minded pet owners. The app will feature free resources, deals, and access to our trainers. If you'd like to join, please visit schoolforthedogs.com/podcastcommunity, or text your email address to 917 414 2625.
Links:
Shameless Pets Treats at Store for the Dogs
