Doggy Donuts

I've been working on dog treats again and finally made some "donuts" worthy to give the test dogs.  We'll see tomorrow how they liked them.

Dog Treats...But No Dog?

A while back I asked readers to let me know if they had any questions or topics for me to write about.  I only got two questions from one reader, so here goes.

Question:
Since you are making dog treats, do you want to get a dog?

Answer:
Yes!  I love dogs and I do want one, but it's not going to happen for a few reasons.

1. My husband doesn't want a dog. 

2. We have a small yard with no fence (fences are not allowed in our neighborhood) so this means the dog could only go outside when we walked it and the idea of walking a dog early in the morning and late at night is not something I would want to do every day.  There are no street lights around here so it is pitch black in the morning and at night.  Not to mention that most of the year the weather really sucks with heat/humidity and thunderstorms in the summer and snow and cold in the winter. 

3. We are gone from the house for an average of 11 to 12 hours a day during the week.

4. A dog would give Manny (one of my cats) a kitty heart attack.

Numbers 2 and 3 mean that the dog would spend a lot of time by itself stuck inside the house which I do not think would be a nice thing to do to an animal.  I've been working on my products for the dog treat business lately, but I will continue to have to use friends/coworkers dogs as the taste testers.

Time Flies

Time flies when you're having fun, but also when you're busy. Days and weeks just go by lately and I didn't even realize it's been almost a week since I posted something here. I'm still super busy at work and I don't see it slowing down at all. We went into DC over the weekend for dinner and saw Chelsea Handler's stand up act. The opener was much better this time around (Heather McDonald), but Chelsea used a lot of material I had heard before or read in her book. I didn't enjoy her last book very much. It felt like she was forced to write it and she didn't really want to. I started baking dog treats again last night. I'm going to try to focus on just six products to keep things simple. I hired a graphic designer to do a header for my Caribbean blog, but she can't start for about a month which gives me some time to get some of the content ready. That's all for now!

Pa'Treats

It's been close to two years now since I first started thinking about starting a home based dog treat bakery business. Many things have diverted me, including having the kitchen remodeled, but the biggest factor has been that I over analyze and complicate things to the point where I end up getting so overwhelmed that I just give up. I need to learn to just jump in and go for it. I saw a picture on a magazine recently of some donuts that made me start thinking about this again since one of the products I wanted to do was a doggie donut (all healthy ingredients, of course). The Super Pet Expo was in town over the weekend and I went to check out the competition...and there was only 1 booth dedicated to homemade treats and another 2 had a few treats as well as other things. I joined in a conversation that the dedicated place was having with a couple men because they were talking about the new rules Virginia has put in place regarding pet food. I knew about this since I have researched just about everything I can think of. Each product has to be registered with the agriculture department and there is a fee of $60 per product. Each product also has to be tested for nutritional content and there are labeling requirements as well (per the FDA). The guy said that two years ago before these rules were made that there were 15 vendors like his, and now only three. I saw this as a huge opportunity! $60 here and there is not going to scare me away. I know many people got into this business because it was cheap to start. Now, not so much. Between all this and the poor economy there seems to be a lot fewer on the internet. The agriculture fee is something that needs to be checked in every state so if they all enact this, it could become very costly, but that will mostly just force me to keep my product selection smaller...which is a good idea for me anyway since my large number of product ideas just complicates things even more. The point of all this is I'm getting ready to do this. I need to start baking some serious amounts of treats. I was a total lurker at the pet expo watching people to see what they liked and didn't and was taking mental notes on how I would set up my booth. My goal is for this to be an internet business, but I would use shows like this to get the name out there. Let me know who has a dog that wants to be a taste tester!

Please Vote

Please vote in my pet bakery name poll on the left side of the blog....and be honest! I don't want to use a name that nobody likes.

Thanks!

I Need a Name!

I really need help coming up with a name for my pet bakery business. The domain names are not available for all my ideas. If anyone has an idea, please let me know! It will be focused on gourmet dog treats. Thanks!