Asheville makers ensure dogs get their share of farm-to-table fare

Locals and listicle makers alike know Asheville is unabashedly fond of man’s best friend. The city regularly lands atop national rankings of dog-friendly locales based on the number of businesses and facilities that welcome canine customers with open arms, including breweries, hotels, parks, restaurants and more.

As a town obsessed with both dogs and delicious cuisine, it’s not surprising that Asheville also boasts several makers focused on crafting doggie meals and treats. For many of these entrepreneurs, better health for our four-legged companions is the bottom line.

You are what you eat

In recent years, the market of attentive pet parents has shifted its attention away from kibble and toward fresh, high-quality food brimming with organic produce, minerals, vitamins and pre- and probiotics. In a 2019 study by The Canadian Veterinary Journal, 96% of survey respondents in the U.S. prioritized healthy food for their pets as much as or more than they prioritized it for themselves — which helps explain why popular, high-end fresh pet food startup The Farmer’s Dog, brought in over $800 million last year.

Kristi King, owner of Green Earth Pet Food, says the death of her 8-year-old German shepherd, Shadow, in 1998 from aggressive bone cancer was the origin of her interest in making her own pet food. During Shadow’s illness, her veterinarian had encouraged King to feed her chicken and rice, which prompted her to begin looking into the ingredients of the kibble she had previously used.

“I discovered it included atrocious things,” she says, citing online reports of animal euthanasia drugs found in pet food products The widespread pet food recall of 2007, in which the consumption of melamine, a type of plastic, caused the deaths of thousands of family pets, further informed her anti-kibble convictions.

After lots of research and consulting with her veterinarian, King says, she started making Shadow’s food from scratch. She continued for about six months but found the process of buying, chopping and cooking ingredients extremely time-consuming.

Around the same time, she began hearing about the benefits of a raw-food diet for pets. “I thought, ‘OK, I’ll try it,’” she says. “That’s been 24 years now; I’ve not looked back.”

While she recognizes that each dog is an individual and that raw foods aren’t necessarily right for every pooch, King says she has witnessed numerous benefits, both in her own dogs and through customers’ testimonials. She especially appreciates the digestibility of uncooked foods.

Ground raw meats and the other ingredients that she includes in her foods, such as organic yogurt, eggs, carrots, kale, apples and green tea leaves, are rich in digestive enzymes, she says. But when foods are cooked at high temperatures, like commercial kibble, she continues, those beneficial components are destroyed. “[With a raw foods diet] their pancreas is not having to produce these massive amounts of digestive enzymes, and this helps prevent diabetes and other pancreatic issues.”

King also makes a line of raw foods for cats. She markets her products locally at the French Broad Co-Op, the Grateful Dog in Brevard and Paws on the Mountain in Cashiers. Otherwise, she sells them directly to consumers from her website.

Labor of love

Similarly, Waggin Meals owner Christie Willett launched her business after the loss of her beloved 14-year-old dachshund, Jack. After he was diagnosed with liver disease, Willett’s veterinarian urged her to feed Jack prescription or homemade meals. Sadly, Jack only lived one more night, driving home to Willett the vital importance of diet to a dog’s health.

In response, she began making her own dog food, ultimately becoming a certified pet nutrition coach. “I learned that everyone thinks kibble is the only way to feed your dog, but it’s not,” Willett says, noting that kibble as we know it today became commonplace in the 1950s due to its convenience and economy.

Willett agrees with King that the problem with kibble lies in the process used to create it. She explains that the ingredients are ground together, processed at a high temperature then extruded through a die-cut machine to create little shapes before being dried and sprayed with flavors, fats and vitamins. Broadly speaking, she says, these practices can dilute nutritional value and can create toxic byproducts.

“With my food, you can pronounce all the ingredients,” she says. “It’s not made in the factory. It’s made by my hands. I source the ingredients — I go to the farms and get it. I developed the recipes.”

Willett makes her products — which are gently cooked, not raw — in a commercial kitchen space in her new West Asheville retail facility, where she also offers pet nutrition and cooking classes. Meals are a mix of proteins, such as chicken, turkey, beef or sometimes fish or venison, with other ingredients that can include such things as rice, green beans, sweet potatoes, blueberries, coconut oil and flax seeds. She sources her meats from Maverick’s Cattle Co. in Weaverville, grows her own spinach and kale and gets other veggies, like sweet potatoes, from the WNC Farmers Market.

Gently cooking the foods, says Willett, not only helps it retain more nutrients than kibble but also kills off potential pathogens. “Because I make dog food in such mass quantities, cross-contamination really concerns me,” she explains.

While Willett is relishing her new Johnson School Road storefront, which opened in June, she’s also actively fundraising to build a holistic palliative care center for terminally ill dogs — Last Resort Pet Sanctuary — on the same property. She hopes for those plans to come to fruition by late 2025.

Food on the move

In 2015, Adventure Hounds Supply Co. owner Kelsey Kuehl began researching ways to help her rescue dog, Kaline, put on weight and soothe his sensitive stomach. She discovered that pumpkin is good for canine digestion, but she wanted to do more than just add a scoop to his meals.

Because both she and Kaline enjoy hiking, it was also important to her to create something portable. “With us spending so much time outdoors, I wanted to have something that I could bring on hikes, because your dog’s going to need that energy and those calories, too, just like we do,” she says.

She began baking pumpkin-based snacks for Kaline to fuel their outdoor adventures and supplement regular meals. Along with pumpkin, Kuehl’s treats incorporate ingredients such as quinoa, oats, free-range eggs, peanut butter, uncured bacon and locally foraged turkey tail mushrooms, which she adds to help with digestion, boost immunity and decrease inflammation. While she regularly offers three flavors, she says the two most popular ones are peanut butter-pumpkin and bacon-peanut butter.

Kuehl doesn’t have a storefront but sells her wares online and in a few local businesses, including Signs for Hope and New Moon Marketplace in Fairview, Wildwood flower shop in Canton and the taproom at Wicked Weed West, where she  sources spent grains from the beer-making process to include in her products. She’s also recently started making cakes for dogs, which can be ordered through Adventure Hounds’ Instagram page, @adventurehounds_avl.

Like King and Willett, Kuehl focuses on creating simple, natural products. “I only use ingredients you can pronounce, as well as things that [people] could eat,” she says. “I always get those dad jokes, like, ‘I could eat this.’ And while you could, I don’t think you would like them as much as the dogs do.”

For more information on Green Earth Pet Food, visit avl.mx/dxc. Visit Waggin Meals online at avl.mx/dxd. Adventure Hounds Supply Co. is at avl.mx/dxe.