What turns a personal passion, an unexpected opportunity, or a problem with your own pet into a business? At SUPERZOO 2026, we sat down with six founders whose very different paths led them to one place: building products they believe can make life better for pets and the people who love them.

In this episode of Barking Mad, hear from Dr. Lindsay Wendt of Botanical Bones, Autumn Smith of Parents 2 Pawz, Ashton Hood of Shepherd Boy Farms, Dr. Michelle Dulake of Fera Pets, Jessica Berger of Bundle x Joy, and Carrie Van Wert of Giddy Kitty. From a veterinarian whose experience with her own dog changed the way she practiced medicine to a goat farmer who stumbled into pet nutrition and an entrepreneur rethinking enrichment specifically for cats, these founders share the stories behind their brands and what it really takes to turn an idea into a pet business.

Show Notes

Learn more about the brands and founders featured in today’s episode:

🦴Botanical Bones: https://botanicalbones.com/

🐶Parents 2 Pawz: https://www.parents2pawz.com/

☀️Shepherd Boy Farms: https://shepherdboyfarms.com/

🐕Fera Pets: https://www.ferapets.com/

💙Bundle x Joy: https://bundlexjoy.com/

🐱Giddy Kitty: https://giddykitty.com/

Episode Chapters:

00:00 — Pet Industry Founders: Six Stories of Innovation & Entrepreneurship

01:18 — Botanical Bones: A New Approach to Pet Wellness

05:49 — Parents 2 Pawz: Turning a Pet Product Idea Into Innovation

09:23 — Shepherd Boy Farms: The Accidental Start of a Pet Food Brand

13:03 — Fera Pets: From Veterinary Medicine to Pet Wellness Brand

17:57 — Bundle x Joy: Building a Pet Brand Without the Guilt

21:44 — Giddy Kitty: Rethinking Cat Toys & How Cats Play

24:57 — Pet Care Innovation: Six Founders, One Mission

INTRO VO

You're listening to the Barking Mad Podcast.

Stephanie Clark

Are we okay with that? Do we really know what we were asking for?

Jordan Tyler

We can't look at an ingredient label and just assume.

Stephanie Clark

I'm going to ask you: Show me the data. I took a shower this month. I'm extra fresh. Like, what does it mean, America?!

Jordan Tyler

There's actually a lot to unpack here…

Stephanie Clark

I mean, insert Mean Girls clip.

Jordan Tyler

Let this be a lesson, you know.

INTRO VO

Welcome in to the Barking Mad Podcast, a podcast for the pet obsessed with the real experts.

Jordan Tyler

Jordan Tyler

From a veterinarian who rewrote her whole approach to medicine after watching her own dog suffer. To a goat farmer who fell into this industry by accident. Join us as we explore the why behind these incredibly fascinating pet industry founders.

Jordan Tyler

Dr. Lindsay Wendt is the founder of Botanical Bones, one of five Black women owned startups to go through the Black Pet Business Network's Rise program, an accelerator that pairs BIPOC entrepreneurs with seasoned veterans to set their brands up for success. Botanical Bones is a vet formulated line of organic, natural supplements for dogs, and while Dr. Wendt is a licensed doctor of veterinary medicine in the conventional sense, it was a personal experience with her own dog that led her down a different path.

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

So I went to UC Davis, learned, you know, the basics of medicine. And actually my soul dog, Nala, that we lost 14 months ago.

Jordan Tyler

So sorry.

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

Thank you. She developed a really severe chronic disease, and I approached it as I would any other patient. But she was not responding to treatment, so we almost considered euthanizing her. And that was when she was ten years old, and she ended up living to 14.5 because she pushed me to find another option.

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

So basically being an integrative for me means I mix conventional medicine with Eastern medicine and other modalities that are not as mainstream. But I like to fuse those together because, you know, just like everything else, when you're able to really pick the best from each section and be able to individualize their care, the health outcomes are amazing.

Jordan Tyler

Dr. Wendt is describing an integrative approach combining Western medicine with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

Jordan Tyler

The idea is if we have more tools we can use to solve pressing pet health issues, why wouldn't we use them?

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

As an integrative vet, I'm constantly using herbs and botanicals and mushrooms, and one of the hardest parts is compliance, meaning: Can I get this patient to take this every day? Can I have the human that's in charge of that patient commit to, you know, adding a powder to the food or a chew or what have you?

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

And so I started thinking, why don't I put this in a form that they're already doing every day. And so although we are a supplement, a lot of people think we're a treat because we look like one. We're a hard, crunchy little biscuit. But although the package is pretty and it is, what's inside really is packing a punch, because these are clinical doses of adaptogens.

Jordan Tyler

Botanical Bones currently offers three supplement formulas Balancing Calm for anxiety relief and “good vibes,” Inner Glow for digestive and gut health, and Flower Power for longevity and immune support. These three functional formulas are complemented by Botanical Bones’ fourth SKU: Love Bites Organic Training Treats, which are formulated as a low calorie option with organic strawberry, beetroot and peanut butter.

Jordan Tyler

Now coming back to the supplements, doctor one has intentionally chosen each of the active ingredients and adaptogens in her formulas. Ashwagandha is just one example.

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

And this is where the nerd and the science kind of aspect of me comes out is: Ashwaghanda is great, but what most people don't know is if ashwagandha is not standardized to have a certain withanolide percentage, which is the active ingredient, it's not having the health benefits that we think it is.

Jordan Tyler

See!?

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

And those are things that most people, and I don't blame them, they wouldn't think about that. But I'm that person that's like, “Can you tell me your withanolide percentage?” Or like, “What's your beta glucan count in your mushrooms?” People are like, “Oh, who's this lady?”

Jordan Tyler

They're like, oh no, she knows what she's talking about. Yeah, because I want to.

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

Yeah, because I want to—I mean, at the end of the day, I've always wanted to be a veterinarian. I am so filled with gratitude that this is what I spend my days doing. And I just want to positively impact animals, period. And so, everything I do will always be me doing the best I can in that moment. And that can evolve over time, as it should for all of us.

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

But it's just having that intentionality that I think really differentiates us.

Jordan Tyler

For Dr. Wendt, the science and the passion are inseparable. But her road into veterinary medicine crystallized a gap in representation that she's looking to help close.

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

There's very few veterinarians that are people of color. So when I was as I went to UC Davis, I was one of two black people out of 700 students.

Jordan Tyler

Oh, I didn't realize it was like that. I knew it was bad, but I didn't know was that bad, but I didn't know it was that bad…

Dr. Lindsay Wendt

It’s really... So, most of the black veterinarians that are in industry, not in industry, but in practice, a lot of them go to one or two schools.

Jordan Tyler

So especially for me, because I'm a California girl and I have always wanted to go to UC Davis. It was very… yeah, it was just an interesting experience to not so to be able to like, be in community and just be able to support each other and, you know, have so many, you know, people like yourself. And even like Pet Food Processing all of these groups that are really stepping up and they're like, “Yeah, we want more diversity and more conclusion.”

Jordan Tyler

Dr. Wendt shares two things with our next guest. She's part of a growing community of founders determined to impact who gets to build in the space, and her own dog ultimately change the direction of her career. The same can be said for Autumn Smith, founder of Parents 2 Pawz, maker of Woofles supplements for dogs.

Autumn Smith

So, I have a background in healthcare myself. I have been working as a scenographer for the past ten years. My dog, Cairo, he came to me with a laundry list of health issues and he is my inspiration behind the brand. I took my healthcare knowledge and the resources of hiring a nutritionist to formulate these supplements that I knew needed to be on the market to help supplement his daily nutrition and health and wealth—wellness, sorry.

Jordan Tyler

Hey, health is wealth. You have to have health, then you’re wealthy.

Autumn Smith

Definitely.

Jordan Tyler

So I hear that. Participating in the Rise Program accelerator actually helped Autumn strengthen her brand, even when it meant pivoting away from her original idea.

Autumn Smith

So originally, we were going to be a treat brand, but we shifted and pivoted to supplementation now, due to the functional ingredients that are in our products. They are all human-grade turkey-based, but each one has different health benefits for different systems of the body. So, for cognitive care, we have our Cheese Woofle. It has ingredients like ashwagandha in it and lion's mane, which are good for cognitive care and health.

Autumn Smith

Our gut health Woofle is our pumpkin willful which has reishi mushroom, which is a mushroom that's good for digestion and immune support. It also has curcumin for anti-inflammatory ginger and marshmallow root, which are great herbs for coating the gut lining and digestion. And lastly, the Berry Woofle. It also is turkey but it has beet root powder which is good for blood flow and circulation.

Autumn Smith

And the mushroom in there that's good for heart health is our shiitake mushrooms, which studies have shown can help to lower our cholesterol levels.

Jordan Tyler

The name of the product comes from the design, which also provides pet owners an easy way to dose the supplements for their individual dog's needs.

Autumn Smith

So, the name Woofles—actually, it's because I thought that the kind of the shape of them, what makes them different in the supplements is that their supplement bars, not chews not anything like that. So, the Woofle is like waffle bars, and the dosing, you're able to break them up. And it's based by weight. And so, you're able to break them up and feed them to your pet.

Autumn Smith

And they look like little waffles to me! Some people say chocolate bars too.

Jordan Tyler

It does look like a chocolate bar, but

Autumn Smith

It’s a Woofle!

Jordan Tyler

I’ll take a waffle. Woofles may have started as a scrappy venture, but Autumn has already taken major steps to make her brand legit.

Autumn Smith

So actually, originally when I was playing with the formulations, I was working out of my partner's labs. He's in biotech and he has his lab space, so I was in the lab with white coats, like mixing this stuff. And so that's where it started. And then once I did get, I did want to be legitimate and started doing it out of the commercial kitchens.

Autumn Smith

It definitely feels more real. It feels more like a job than in my kitchen, in the comfortability of my kitchen. But it feels very official. So me going and taking the steps to get my pet food license to work out of a commercial kitchen is just something I really needed to do to make sure I'm legitimate, because that's one of the things that my brand is.

Autumn Smith

It's like, I want to I want to be legit. I don't want to cut corners when it comes to production, when it comes to ingredients and anything.

Jordan Tyler

As you've heard so far, some pet brands are born from personal experiences: a sick dog, a stubborn problem, or a gap in the market just waiting to be filled. But every once in a while, a pet brand is born by accident. Meet Ashton Hood, founder of Shepherd Boy Farms, a freeze-dried pet nutrition brand that started unexpectedly on a goat farm.

Ashton Hood

I was literally a shepherd, out farming, raising livestock. That was how it started. And then a year or so, after two years or so after that, I got called by a company wanting raw goat milk, which I'd never heard of at the time, and I said, “Why do you want raw goat milk, you know?” And they said, “Well, it helps allergies, it helps digestion, it helps skin and coat.”

Ashton Hood

And they went down this litany of lists and I was like, “Okay, well it sounds like a miracle, you know, product. But okay, let me look at it and see.” So I took it home, started feeding my dog that. And one thing they said that stood out to me is they said, you know, “It helps tear stains.” And so my dog's Zeus, his name is a Poo-Ton (Pouton).

Ashton Hood

He's 12 pounds, pure white, except tear stains right there. And five days after, seven days after those went away. And so that was kind of the moment I was like, “Okay, there's something to this.”

Jordan Tyler

Once he realized the impact his goats could have on pet health, Ashton plunged headfirst into the pet nutrition realm. Ever since, he's been gradually adding capabilities to create new formulas that harness the power of goat's milk.

Ashton Hood

A lot of companies do co-manufacture, especially in the freeze-dried space. We do everything in-house. So, when I first started selling the frozen goat milk, I had the problem of it’s… it's frozen. You know, you got a cold, dry ice, all these things. By the time it got to the store, it's very expensive. And so, I stumbled on freeze drying and said, “Okay, this is this is amazing.”

Ashton Hood

You know, we can take it. Go from a 16oz down to 2oz, you know, ship it for very minimal cost, and it's shelf stable and you don't lose anything. So, it was fantastic, you know. So we went that direction, got into the freeze drying, and then we started doing everything peripheral. So, we started adding in our dicing for our treats.

Ashton Hood

We started a mixing grinding for our foods, all the way down to the finished bag, you know. So, we put it into the finished bag, it all gets tested and it leaves our warehouse and goes to the consumer or to the distributor right from there.

Jordan Tyler

Ashton may have stumbled into the pet nutrition space by accident, but he's certainly not done experimenting. Not by a long shot.

Ashton Hood

So, we just launched a new recipe, a kangaroo recipe. So, it is a wild kangaroo from Australia that we're sourcing, you know, organic fruits and vegetables, just like all of our other proteins and complete balanced meals. So, it's—that's our new thing this this this week at SUPERZOO. We're always working on something new which is which is kind of fun.

Ashton Hood

You know, we have five or six different prototypes of new treats, new products that's sitting on our desks that we've been playing with, you know, and it's I don't know if I can give too, too much away because we haven't totally settled on it, but it's a total different direction than what our other treats are, you know.

Ashton Hood

So it'll be it'll be very unique. It'll probably rival the uniqueness of what the freeze-dried goat milk. Did you know something that's new in the freeze-dried space. Something that's exciting, innovative, you know, so we're excited about it.

Jordan Tyler

From a happy accident to a vertically integrated pet food manufacturer. Ashton reminds us it's never too late to pursue our passions.

Ashton Hood

I picked a career based on what I thought would be a good, successful financial career, not something I enjoyed or loved. And then I said, I've got to find something that I love to do. And that's how Shepherd Boy Farms is born.

Jordan Tyler

Now, departing the goat farm and heading back to the clinic. Our next guest took a more traditional route into the pet health space. Dr. Michele Dulake is a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and founder of vet formulated supplement brand Fera Pets.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

Obviously I'm a veterinarian, had been a vets for 13 years now.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

And I was really just looking for a holistic brand that had organic ingredients, no fillers, very clean formulas that had effective dosing, and I couldn't find anything on the market. And this was ten years ago at this point. So, I decided to start my own supplement brand, kind of as a side hustle, because I was still working in the vet clinic.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

And then our formulas really resonated with pet parents and it became my full time job. So here I am ten years later, and I'm still running Fera Pets, and it's been really great.

Jordan Tyler

Dr. Michelle Dulake

I just felt like it was a really good fit because they truly believed that we were a brand that could be a household like generational brand, and they really wanted the pet supplement brand that they purchased to be completely doing everything right. Like, we are NASC Certified, we have third-party testing. We post all of our testing results on our website.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

We're transparent about all of our ingredients. Like any testing, microbial testing, heavy metal to everything is on our website. And so I think that they were, you know, obviously impressed that we were that transparent. And also, they didn't want to come in and just take over and change everything. They wanted it to stay founder-led and have me and my other co-founder, Emily, really involved.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

And I love that because I didn't want the vision and the mission to go away. I wanted to like, see it through and I wanted to be a part of that still.

Jordan Tyler

Remaining founder-led means Dr. Dulake gets to continue innovating and refining her brand with the support of General Mills behind her, and she has some cool formulas she's working on next.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

So, we are launching our Longevity support for dogs. It's coming out in September. It's soft chews, and it's for dogs that are older than one year old. But we include clinically studied ingredients like NMN, which is a precursor for NAD+, which is needed for just cellular regeneration, DNA repair. And then we also include other ingredients like resveratrol, which stimulates different pathways that work with NAD to also help with like, energy production.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

And then we have our next product that I'm also very excited about called Healthy Weight and Muscles. And so, I think the weight, you know, obesity weight sector is getting a lot more attention just because of what's happening in the human space. But I really wanted to create something not just for, you know, overweight dogs, but also for dogs that are getting older and losing like muscle mass.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

And so, we created this to keep in mind those dogs that are a little bit overweight and help with metabolism, but then also help those dogs that are losing muscle mass. And so we include clinically studied ingredient HMV, which basically helps with lean muscle maintenance and production. And then we have a postbiotic that has clinical studies to help with metabolism.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

And so we're kind of getting at them from both lenses to kind of have their an optimal Body Condition Score.

Jordan Tyler

All this science points back to education, something Dr. Dulake feels is important to empower pet owners with evidence based information they need to make the best decisions for their pet.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

I do think that that's an area that we're trying to figure out, though, because there does take a lot of education with our supplements, because we do—we are scientific. We rely on the science and the clinical studies. And so that is, needs to be a bigger focus for us. But also, I think people are leaning more into like education.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

What are the clinical studies. How effective is this? Is there the right amount of the ingredient in a product? So, I feel like people are starting to investigate more themselves. And so yeah, so I'm, I love educating. It's going to be always a big piece of what we do at Fera. When people feel like they see an ad and it says, “If you don't buy this, your dog is going to get cancer!”

Dr. Michelle Dulake

Or, “If you don't buy this, your dog is going to get arthritis, like, tomorrow!”

Jordan Tyler

Yeah.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

And it's I just don't like that. How about we just start educating people about what is inside the supplement and how it can benefit instead of making people… making people scared that their dog is going to die the next day if they don't get on a supplement. That is not what we're here for.

Dr. Michelle Dulake

I also think that marketing claims that sound too good to be true are probably not true.

Jordan Tyler

Jessica Berger

So, in a prior life, I worked at PetSmart and I ran the natural dog food desk, so I was really a part of the evolution of natural kind of coming to life. So, I was on the desk as Blue Buffalo was just exploding, and we were thinking differently about what really constituted natural dog food. So, I'm really excited or proud to have been a part of the evolution, I think, in a big way.

Jessica Berger

But through that process, obviously I learned a lot about pet nutrition. And when my Great Dane, Winston, started to be a lot of skin and digestive issues, I, even with all the education and knowledge that I had, I was really struggling. So, we really started the brand with the ethos of finding, you know, offering products that were completely poultry-free, beef-free, and really making that validation claim so that once you came into the brand and you saw that improvement, you are comfortable then to purchase other products within the brand.

Jordan Tyler

Jessica Berger

I would say a game changer for us is we've just completed a clinical study and so very excited for that to come out. And I knew the results would be good, just based on our community and, you know, reviews and personal experience of my own dogs. But it was, like, very significant. So we're going to be coming out with those results here soon.

Jessica Berger

Really excited to share that. And now I feel I've got like the proof in the pudding, you know, like it's there and I can really like quantify and qualify what we've been doing.

Jordan Tyler

This evidence is important for just to continue building her brand and connecting with pet parents through education and compassion; never fear, guilt or shame.

Jessica Berger

I am very much anti-dog-mom guilt, dog-parent guilt. You know you should not be made to feel bad if you're not buying the most expensive dog food.

Jordan Tyler

Thank you.

Jessica Berger

You should not be made to feel bad if you're not feeding fresh or frozen. I am a dog food CEO founder. I cannot afford to feed my dog fresh and frozen.

Jessica Berger

I always recommend to pet owners like ditch the guilt, number one. Listen to your dog. And then find a balance, right? Like find little things that you can do to boost the bowl or whatever that you want to kind of call it. For me, that's like, that's a way where you can buy a very simple product that you can add to your food to kind of give that boost, to give that higher premium nutrition, but is very affordable.

Jordan Tyler

As a scrappy Latina founder just knows building a brand takes a village. For Bundle x Joy, community is more than a marketing strategy. It's part of the brand's DNA.

Jessica Berger

This is my favorite event of the year, just because I get to connect with so much of our community. I really am proud of the fact that we've built a community first brand, and so to be here with real people, you know, I actually know their name and we know their dogs names and, you know, we see them and we ask about their life or, you know. I think for me, no matter what, how big Bundle x Joy ever gets, we it's really important to me that we stay connected with the community.

Jordan Tyler

Our final guest today knows a little something about building brands. She's already done it once before. Meet Carrie van Wert of Giddy Kitty, a new cat toy brand taking the science of feline play deadly serious.

Carrie Van Wert

I was playing with my cat one day and I thought, I still don't think there's the right enrichment toys for cats. And I thought, I know what I'm doing now. Let's maybe see if I can bring a new product to market that I really feel helps cats in a different way with mental stimulation, boredom relief. And I didn't realize that when I started this three years ago, that actually in [20]26 and [20]27, that the cat enrichment toys would be the number one growing segment of the cat space, and that cat would be growing so much or doing this at exactly the right time, which is which is wonderful.

Jordan Tyler

Before Giddy Kitty, Carrie built Kitty Sift into the number one disposable litter box in the country, and she's already seen success for Giddy Kitty. At SUPERZOO, Carrie took the grand prize of the LAUNCH Pitch Competition, co-hosted by the World Pet Association, which organizes SUPERZOO every year, and Nestlé Purina. Giddy Kitty takes play and enrichment to the next level through various designs aimed to mimic our cat's natural hunting and stalking instincts.

Carrie Van Wert

I think play is what we all need, even adults, and—but the enrichment really, I think, brings it with allowing it to combine with hunting and completing that that full hunt cycle. It allows a little bit better enrichment experience.

Jordan Tyler

Totally.

Carrie Van Wert

I think what we were saying is that play is one area of enrichment, but there's also hunting, right? And so enrichment really could encompass more than just play. And it allows a more satisfaction for mental stimulation, boredom relief, exercise, all the healthy benefits that we as humans need and animals need. But our products even take it one step further and allow the full hunt cycle completion so that the cat actually can pounce, stock capture and then consume, which allows them satisfaction of earning their reward.

Jordan Tyler

The most important thing about Giddy Kitty is that it was designed with cats, for cats, by somebody who's obsessed with cats.

Carrie Van Wert

And like I said, I think dogs have had a lot of decades of this kind of innovation, and we believe there's a category gap associated here where the cat category just wasn't catching up with that enrichment. And some cat products have been really just dog products that were made smaller. And so, our products are very cat centric and are made to work best for the way cats need to hunt and play.

Carrie Van Wert

We have fun animals like a dragonfly in a mouse and the flower, and we believe we have the best treat ball in the industry because it's made specific for cat, not just kind of what I was saying. A regurgitated dog product made smaller.

Jordan Tyler

It’s not for small dogs.

Carrie Van Wert

No. You know what people do tell me that their dogs are playing with it as well. But I mean, it is specific for cat.

Jordan Tyler

I've said it before and I'll say it again entrepreneurs are built different. It takes passion, resilience, a willingness to put yourself out there and an acceptance that you might fall flat on your face. Nobody knows this better than a repeat founder like Carrie.

Carrie Van Wert

Well, it's a tough road, so you better believe and love what you're doing. Otherwise, it really is, it's all encompassing in your life. So it's… it can be kind of a grind at times, but the reward is there.

Jordan Tyler

Not every pet brand starts with a business plan. And honestly? The best bonding stories never do. Sometimes, it starts with your own pet and a problem you can't figure out how to solve. Sometimes, it starts on a goat farm. You just never know. What all six founders have in common, though, is they noticed something, and instead of just talking about it or waiting for somebody else to figure it out, they sought to solve it.

Jordan Tyler

Of course, having the ideas the easy part, turning it into a company—and sticking with it—is something else entirely. We've included links to all the companies mentioned in today's episode in the show notes, so you can keep up with these brands and the founders behind them. A huge thank you to Dr. Lindsay Wendt, Autumn Smith, Ashton Hood, Dr. Michelle Dulake, Jessica Berger and Carrie van Wert for taking time out of a busy conference to join us in the recording booth.

Jordan Tyler

Thank you for tuning in to the Barking Mad Podcast. If you'd like to learn more about BSM partners, please visit us at www.bsmpartners.net.

Jordan Tyler

Don't forget to follow us on your favorite leading podcast platform. And if you found today's episode useful, share it with a friend and we'd like to thank the very loyal good boys and girls on our podcast team Jacob Parker, Cady Wolf, Neeley Bowden Lewis, Anna Guilfoyle, and Ada-Miette Thomas. A special shout out to David Perez for the original music. See you next time.