Feeding Your Pet A Delicious Home Cooked Feast │ Dog Child

Feeding Your Pet A Delicious Home Cooked Feast │ Dog Child

ANIMAL INNOVATIONS SHOW - EPISODE 146 - DOG CHILD

Feeding Your Pet A Delicious Home Cooked Feast │ Dog Child

Are you feeding your pets with the same thing over and over during every meal? You can probably imagine how painfully dull that is.  You might also notice that your dog isn’t enjoying their dog food or kibble anymore.

Like humans, dogs do crave something new and delicious once in a while. As a pet parent, that could be hard since not all homemade dog food recipes on the internet contain the essential nutrients they need. 

Nicole Marchand, CEO of Dog Child, faced the same problem. She wanted to cook for her dog, Charlotte, to make her eat healthier and happier, but she couldn’t find a recipe with enough nutrients. So, she created her own.

 

Feeding your Precious Dogs At Home

Feeding Your Pet A Delicious Home Cooked Feast │ Dog Child

Nicole’s veterinarian gave her a stern scolding once she shared that she tried home cooking for her dog. She learned that,

“There’s a lot of dogs that come in for home cooking with nutrient deficiency, broken bones, and a lot of the online recipes lack essential nutrients and are not properly formulated.”

Despite that, Nicole just could not let go of the idea of cooking for her dog. So, she created her own meal mixes and ensured they contained sufficient essential nutrients to keep dogs healthy. 

With Dog Child, Nicole wanted to,

“Help pet parents and empower them to be able to cook for their pets at home and make it in an easy way, so you can use ingredients you can find in your house and really simplify the process.”

She successfully created meal mixes that provide optimal enjoyment and health for dogs. Her company made the perfect supplement to give dogs a complete and balanced meal while giving your pet a modern-day luxury meal!

 

Spoiling Your Pet with Dog Child’s Meal Mixes

Feeding Your Pet A Delicious Home Cooked Feast │ Dog Child

Dog Child offers a wide range of nutritionally optimal products that has all the essential nutrients and vitamins that your dog will need to thrive and function. 

Currently, three main meal mixes are available; Mixed Veggie, Organic Oats and Berries, and Grain Free Meal Mix. 

Simple and accessible for people to cook for their dogs.”

Each product was carefully crafted and formulated to create simple, delicious, and nutritious meal mixes that would make both pet and owner happy. With the number of choices, Nicole promises a wide variety. 

Feeding Your Pet A Delicious Home Cooked Feast │ Dog Child

She consulted with various experts, including veterinarian advisors and an animal nutrition consultant, to ensure that the product’s formula delivered what it intended. 

In 15 minutes, you can cook tasty meals by adding ground protein (meat, chicken, lamb, etc.,) water, and oil! Less stress and hassle to make your precious pet happy during meal times! 

“I want us to be the destination when you think about cooking for your dogs.”

Dog Child meal mixes are for adult maintenance and consumption. They are for adult dogs that generally weigh up to 90 pounds. Ensure you read the label or instructions carefully before giving them to your dog. 

 

You can visit their official website at dogchild.co if you want to order one of their meal mixes. You can use the discount code: DOOBERT to get 15% off their products! 

Have suggestions for who we should interview next?

Send us a message at [email protected]!

Nicole: Hi, I’m Nicole Marchand, the Founder and CEO of Dog Child. Welcome to The Animal Innovations Show.

Chris: Excellent introduction, Nicole. So, start us off.

Tell us who you are and how you’re innovating and helping animals. 

Nicole: So, at Dog Child, our mission is to make cooking for our dogs simple, nutritious, and delicious. 

So, I started looking into what I was feeding my dog Charlotte, and kind of looked down at her bowl and thought, why isn’t she eating like me? Fresh, whole food.

So, I went on the internet, found a recipe online, and thought I was the greatest dog mom cooking for my dog Charlotte.

And when I mentioned it to my vet, I got a stern lecture just telling me that they’re seeing a lot of dogs coming from home cooking, with nutrient deficiencies, broken bones, and a lot of the online recipes are lacking essential nutrients and they’re not properly formulated.

So, that was really my mission was, to help pet parents and to empower them to be able to cook for their pets at home, and make it in an easy way so you can use ingredients that you can find in your house and really simplify the process.

And you know, one of our tag lines are: cooking for healthy, happy pets.

Our pets are only here for a short time and we really want them to enjoy the food they’re eating, just like we enjoy food so much.

It’s such like a cornerstone of what we do. It’s also better for their health.

When you think of when they’re not eating fresh foods, often it’s processed, dried foods, which we know it’s not as healthy just from our own health, even.

And so our first product liner, which we call meal mixes, so those are organic fruits, vegetables are nutrient mix, and all the pet parent has to do is buy their own ground meat. Add in water, oil, and in less than 15 minutes a week, you have fresh meals for your dog that they’ll absolutely love. 

Chris: Wow.

That sounds really too simple and too easy. Because like you I just said, when you do it yourself, there is a lot of supplements and you do want to make sure that it’s a well-balanced diet, because you can’t just feed your dog raw meat.

As much as they love it, it’s not necessarily going to help them health-wise.

Nicole: Yes, and so it’s surprising. We took a lot of time to formulate our meal mixes with both vets and pet nutritionists.

So, to make sure they were complete and balanced, and we’re including a lot of really high-quality fruits and vegetables. Some have grains, some don’t have grains.

And as long as you mix them with we recommend either ground Beef, Grand Lamb, ground Turkey, Grand Chicken, and with our formulas, those all turn out to be complete and balanced with all the nutrients they require.

And then the other thing we do is we encourage pet parents to use ingredients that they might have in their fridge, such as broccoli stems, brown bananas, and really incorporate those into your dog size.

So, we suggest adding up to 10% of food that might normally go to waste in your home into your dog’s food.

And once again, you’re reducing waste in your own home and you’re adding extra vitamins to your dog’s meals.

Chris: You mentioned obviously this came up because of your dog Charlotte. So what year was that that you had this kind of epiphany that I got to do something better than just the dry kibble.

Nicole: So I kind of have this change in heart. My dog Charlotte was an extremely picky eater. She had health issues, and I was often buying three or four foods, laying them on the floor, and just, like, praying that she ate.

When I started cooking for her, she quickly devoured the food.

And that’s really what made me think, you know what, I want to start this. I really wanted to make it really, like I said, simple and accessible for people to cook for their dogs.

Chris: So now when you start, you said, all right, I’m going to do something about this. Obviously, you checked out different recipes and things.

How did you go about determining where to begin? I mean, there are so many different sizes and breeds and what is the nutritional needs of all these different types of dogs.

Nicole: So we really wanted something that everyone agreed on and everyone thought was really high quality.

And so that wasn’t my expertise.

So I really did turn to those experts, but it did take a lot of trial and error, a lot of research and a lot of time to get them to the point where we were happy.

Chris: So now what types of things go into these mixes?

Because you mentioned, really all I need is one of the different types of meat and then mixing that in and everything else is kind of accounted for. 

Nicole: Yes.

So, we have three different flavors.

So, the first one is our mixed veggie, and surprisingly, the dogs love that one. And so what’s in that one is sweet potato, broccoli, kale, pumpkin, parsley.

And then kind of the base of all of our mixes are what we call our essential nutrient mix, everything a dog really needs to thrive on.

Then we have our organic oats and berries mix. So that’s organic whole-grain oats, strawberries, blueberries, bananas, apples, cranberries.

And then we have our green free mix, which is organic coconut, pumpkin, peas and chickpeas.

Chris: Interesting.

Now, you mentioned before that when you went to your vet, she was like, hold on, before you start cooking.

So, if you go back to your vet since and said, hey, look, I created this whole line of stuff now 

Nicole: Yeah, exactly. And actually that journey, they did a study and 95% of the recipes currently online, lack of nutrients.

And a lot of the time I find veterinarians, they’re not specialized in food. They’ll often just go and encourage you to eat, to buy kibble.

And I just wanted to really have a place where pet parents could go to and feel really confident about feeding their dog, about cooking for their dog.

We encourage pet parents, any amount of fresh food is great for your dog.

Chris: So, you mentioned the three products.

So now, do those work for all different breeds of dogs, all different sizes of dogs, and weights? Is it just a matter of how much you’re mixing in?

Nicole: Yeah, so it’s exactly how much the quantity that you’ll make.

So, our mixes are formulated for adult maintenance, so they’re for adult dogs, they’re not for puppies, and they’re generally for under 90 pounds.

So, they’re not formulated for giant breeds, but they’re formulated for anywhere from 5 pounds to 90 pounds.

So, the way the recipes work is you generally buy 1 pound of ground meat, so graham beef, and then you add a cup and three-quarters of our meal mix, water, and then oil.

So, for a 20-pound dog, one meal mix bag will last you a month, and that’s feeding two meals a day.

Chris: Oh, wow, that’s pretty good.

Now, you mentioned oil. What kind of oil gets mixed in with this stuff?

Nicole: So, the beef and the lamb, you add in olive oil, and with the white meats, the turkey and chicken, you add in fish oil.

So, they both balance each other out and add those essential vitamins that each meat would be lacking.

Chris: So, what’s the vision here?

So, your intention to build out a whole product line of things? I mean, where are you going with this?

Nicole: So we want to be the Bona Petite Food 52 for dogs.

I want dog trial to be where you go to when you’re thinking of cooking for your dog.

And it’s not just meals. We have treat recipes, we have cake recipes, we have ice cream recipes. 

Chris: Nice.

Nicole: All with a wellness bent on them. They’re going to be low and dairy low in sugar plant for it a lot of the time.

So, I really want us to be the destination for when you think about cooking for your dog.

So, we’re working on right now with fish, and then we’re also working on a vegetarian formula where you could add an egg.

And so we do have a number of products that we will be launching in the fall, so stay tuned.

Chris: What have you learned about yourself in the journey so far.

Nicole: Just like perseverance, right?

As an entrepreneur, every day you’re going to have wins, but you’re also going to have things that are going to set you back and you have to just keep pushing forward even when you feel like, oh, no—

So, I’d say perseverance—

Chris: So, tell people again what the website is and how they can get a hold of you. 

Nicole: So, it’s DOGCHILD.CO 

Chris: And as I wrap things up, I would love to tell our viewers and listeners, please check out DOOBERT.COM because there are opportunities to be a foster to be a transporter.

There’s so many different ways you can help out to rescue animals.

And if you have an idea that you’ve been sitting on for something that’s innovative that could help animals, we’d love to know about it, love to have you on the show.

Just go to INNNOVATIONS.SHOW  and tell us about it or tell us somebody else that you know of that’s doing something innovative and we’d love to have them on the show.

So, Nicole, thank you so much for coming on and sharing, and hopefully, we’ll be able to help have you back on in a little while in the future and see what you’re doing next.

Nicole: Yeah, I would love to. Thank you so much, Chris.

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