I became interested in holistic pet nutrition at a very young age. My family owned two basset hounds, Bonnie and Clyde. Looking back, I now realize they both showed the typical symptoms of poor health that comes from feeding a low quality processed diet. While they were not “sick” in the eyes of conventional medicine, they were not truly healthy either. They shed like crazy, had terrible dandruff, smelled yeasty as heck, and were both a little on the chunky side. After Clyde died at of only eight years old from “old age” my mom started doing some research and came across Ian Billinghurst’s book “Give Your Dog Dog A Bone.” After that, we transitioned to feeding a species appropriate raw food diet and never looked back. So I’ve been around raw feeding since I was about 10 years old.
For my undergraduate degree in university, I studied Animal Science with the plan to apply to vet school after three years. While I found many of my classes very interesting, the farther I got into my degree, the more evident it became that my views on pet health were not shared by my professors or most of the other students in the program. Discouraged, I decided that the path of veterinary medicine was not for me and so I switched into the English department, deciding to keep animals as my hobby and not as a career.
However, my passion for animals was not satisfied merely volunteering and fostering for various rescue organizations; I wanted to make a bigger impact. So in 2015, I convinced my husband to open up a natural pet food store in Leduc, Alberta called The Bone & Biscuit. It has been an amazing journey so far, and we have been able to help so many pets in our area. In a short amount of time, we realized many pet parents kept describing similar concerns for their dogs & cats such as obesity, yeast infections, hot spots, dry skin & coat, allergies, and joint concerns. While we never offer medical advice, by making suggestions for some healthy diet and lifestyle alterations, we have seen vast improvements in our feline and canine customers.
Seeing the positive impact we were able to have locally, I knew that with the right platform we would be able to help even more pets worldwide. So, in November 2016, I created Holistic Pet Radio. Our HPR community is growing daily, and I can’t wait to see where the future takes us.
Holistic Pet Radio 