Both men were called and served in World War II. When Bill found out his boot camp base was home to a large kennel of German Shepherds being trained as bomb-sniffing dogs, he immediately went to visit them. He saw that they were scraggly and undernourished, and asked permission to help them. With his supervisors’ approval, he asked his Dad to send fresh meat, cereal and supplements so that he could prepare nutritious food for the dogs. In no time, they were looking and performing far better. Bill was transferred shortly after, but he never lost that passion for dogs and the benefits of high-quality nutrition.

When Bill returned home after the war, he realized his passion for helping dogs to thrive had not left him. With his wife Ruth’s blessing, he and Jack set out to improve dog food nutrition. Back then, almost every food provided protein that was vegetable or gluten based (corn gluten, wheat gluten, etc.). This type of vegetable-based protein with added meat or chicken meal was not easily utilized by dogs, meaning that they did not benefit from all the essential and non-essential amino acids dogs needs to thrive. Through trial and error, for many months, he worked to refine the recipe to help find the best combination of ingredients, vitamins and minerals. He also realized one more critical piece to dog food – protecting the key nutrients in the raw ingredients as they are made into food.