How Good Pet Food Kitchen and Pawleo are changing pet diets

Are you worried about the nutrition in the food you buy for your pet? Try these independent providores instead.

Annabelle Selleck says her food has a visible effect on a pet’s health.

It’s ruff being a city dog — no sheep to herd, owners throwing balls using a plastic device and the dinner comes from a can with a few dry pellets which sometimes doesn’t even look fit for a dog.

Sure it says it has the vitamins and nutrients for a healthy coat, etc, but is the promotion all bark and no bite?

Good Pet Food Kitchen creator Annabelle Selleck moved from working as an assistant director on Home and Away to the dog food industry after an in-between period managing vet clinics.

“I was seeing a lot of young animals coming in with inflammatory illnesses,” she says.

She planned on writing a book on canine nutrition but after a friend pointed out how time poor people were, decided to create her own line of ready-to-serve dog food.

Selleck said it is important to remember that dogs are carnivores; it is important to have a complete and balanced diet for your furry friend.

“I’m not here to ruffle feathers,” she says. “I still have a lot of contacts in the vet industry. I’m just adding another option.”

As a vegetarian, Selleck cares about animal welfare and said she tries to do her best to ensure the source animals for the dog food had the “best lives” which translates to free range chicken and pasture-fed beef.

Not only is the food fit for a dog, it is also fit for humans, provided you cook the raw chicken.

Selleck has eaten the steamed fish and vegetables as a joke and friends of hers tried another dish when they went on holiday and arrived to find all shops shut.

She says big multinationals were catching on to the fact that pet owners were willing to pay a bit more in order to have their animals eat healthier with more natural ingredients.

A key difference between her and large companies was the natural way she provided vitamins like eggshell powder to add calcium, she adds.

She’s confident that once the dogs try her food, the owners will buy it again and again.

“Honestly, people say to me, ‘Do you put crack in your food?’,” she says.

Jess Morton from Pawleo in Melbourne has been feeding dogs a mixture of raw meat, vegetables, fruits, seeds and spices for the past year.

She started researching healthy diets for dogs after her Airedale Archie suffered a skin condition following a flea bite.

Once she started making Archie’s meals, friends told her that she should turn it into a business.

Morton said her market is dogs with irritable bowel syndrome, recovering from cancer and owners who want their dogs to have a healthier diet.

The mixes change every week with ingredients like turmeric to act as an anti-inflammatory and coconut oil getting the nutrients in the body faster, Morton said.

She said dogs traditionally would have been sniffing around the campfire and eating leftovers.

Morton said while the mix is primarily meat there is also a bit of fruit.

“My dog will eat a whole banana,” she says.

“I really like to get customer feedback so varieties have developed over what people say.”