 edition of Create Onigiri. I absolutely believe that each and every one of us has a purpose. Our purpose comes from our passion. That passion burns so deeply inside of us that we must respond or react to it and go on that path to create our life. Oftentimes if you don't, you find yourself being unhappy or feeling like you missed something or you're lost in life. Sometimes you have more than one purpose or passion in your life. Your second passion comes along later on in life. Today's guest, Carrie Marble of Bark and Scratch Outpost, is going to tell us exactly how a passion led her down a road to a purpose not only for her but for many many others. Hi Carrie, welcome to the show. Hi Tony. It's wonderful to have you here today. Well thank you for having me. That's absolutely my pleasure. So the first thing I want to talk about because I just have to say in so many ways you saved my dog and probably a number of other pets and you have no idea how many pets you've probably helped and saved along the way. That's part of the reason I'm so passionate about having you on this show today. Thank you. So how did you first get on this track of pet food? Well I was lucky enough to have a Bijan Faze come into my life 12 years ago. Her name is Snowbell and I didn't know anything about pet food or dogs for that matter and we experienced some allergy issues within six months of starting the vet recommended food in the puppy pack. Yeah. You know you go to your your first puppy appointment and the vet has all the knowledge and they give you a folder and has all the info and that's where I got the variety of food to feed my dog. Right. Did I read the back? No. Did I do any research? No. You know I just fed it. Trusted. That's right. Trusted. Yeah. And it didn't really turn out so well because she started having anal sac problems. Didn't know what an anal sac was. I was quite confused when he first said that. I was like what? You know and what's going on? Yeah exactly. And then we would be walking and having fun activity and she would turn and bite her side to the point where she had no fur. They call them hot spots. Found that out very quickly. Yeah. And it just we ended up having her anal sacs removed. And this was all within a short six period six months to a year because you know I am the type of mom that no it's not working. We need to try something else. So I'm constantly in the vet clinic trying to figure out what's going on. And for a while there I thought it might have been one of the worst things I've ever did because there was so much stress and that's six months. Yeah. You know and this poor puppy you know but then I lucked out in my groomer had some information for me and a path that I just wasn't introduced to yet. Exactly. So I was very very lucky that she was the type of person that said hey what's going on here and then she showed me the food that show dogs would eat. And I didn't think there was any difference. I mean the food company that sponsors the show is that not the food that the winner eats. No it's not. Most likely it's not. Not if they're the winner. Right. Now it's so interesting because my story is similar. I have a hairless Chinese crested and even on his papers it says he's pink and brown. And my sister jokingly said to me only you would find a pink dog. And I was really proud that I had a pink dog. But from day one he was throwing up every time he ate every time all this mucus would come out of him. Sure. So I ended up going through all these different foods and I was going to the typical pet stores where they sell the typical things. And I called his the person who I had gotten him from and she said no no that's perfect keep him on the food. I'm like no no no no do you realize I finally said to her I go do you know he's actually white and not pink. And she went there was a gasp. She went and she said no I didn't. So from day one he had had all these allergies. I took him. I got him tested by the vet and he's allergic to every protein. Every filler like oats barley corn potato like I'm like what am I supposed to feed this dog. So I started going to a health food store and I bought him ostrich. Oh boy. And he was okay with it but he was still responding and then somebody turned me on to you guys. Now he's already a year old at this point. A year old. But by the time I reach you you your store says hey try duck. And I'm like yeah okay. I was willing to try anything and that's the first thing he could eat. That he did not physically react to. So thank you for that. Oh you're welcome. So your journey helped my journey and again he was the first pet I'd ever had. So like you I no idea about these things. Right. I think a lot of people don't they really don't know it's not something that you learn in school you know and you see the commercials it's so easy you just put the food in the dish and everybody's happy we ride around in convertibles and we're all good. Exactly. So tell me how did you go from learning about this food to starting this store with it. It was necessity in a way because we were driving out of town to get her food. My dog is not only allergic to fillers and certain ingredients she's actually the processing and a lot of animals it's the processing of the food. So we were trying different types of textures and things because of course I was afraid I wasn't into pet food you know the way I am now and you know it wasn't as if I was getting encouragement from the veterinarian I was working with. Oh yeah I was now going off of outside of him trying to find something because his his ending to my dog relationship was to be to euthanize my pet. He had actually said she's a year old you know so it's you know euthanizer she's no good start over and I wasn't going to do that. So that's where the processing came into play because I was feeding more natural kibbles without all the fillers because that's where I could find them out you know in the other area of the county and I started seeing results but not a hundred percent it's when I actually said okay you know what let's try the frozen and at first I was so afraid of it I fed it frozen I didn't defrost it I thought if I didn't defrost it not that stuff my vet said you know would come to be and the dog ate it anyway so it didn't matter and as time went on she started getting better and better so we ended up opening the store because I worked my husband had a window and door store and we worked the same hours that the store was open we were going to and we would be home at and relaxing a minute time to go feed the dog and oh my gosh I forgot to go pick up the food so it was really out of necessity I started going around Milwaukee County trying to find it there was nobody that sold the raw diet so my husband suggested we had a building on Blue Mountain that was kind of sitting idle a couple of things you know just weren't really working out and he said why don't you open a pet food store and I thought at first like yeah right you know but I literally went into the freeze freezer pulled out the bag of food I was feeding called 800 number on the back and said hey we're gonna open a store in Milwaukee how do we get your food that's literally how it started and they sent a rep in from Middle West which is one of my biggest distributors I'm still dealing with them they're a local Illinois you know but that's kind of local it's a close you know and they are small right you know so what really helps us pick our food is we like to deal with distributors that pick their food with our same mindset right I do have some bigger distributors I work with but I work with nine distributors to all together so that we can get the freshest food the different variety and a lot of them have the same mindset that we do you know we don't want the fillers we don't want the bad preservatives because you could have great ingredients and then the preservative just wipes it all out exactly you know yeah now I'll tell you when I told my vet I was feeding my dog raw they about fell on the floor oh yes I have to tell you it's been ages I don't know if anyone remember this like I did but my vet put a mr. Yuck sticker on my folder a lot of people do not know what mr. Yuck is mr. Yuck was a sticker that you put on all your products before they had those things that stopped the cupboards from being opened by kids yeah so you put mr. Yuck stickers on and during the cartoons they would be commercials mr. Yuck mr. Yuck I remember those yeah touch it and I was like where did you get a mr. Yuck sticker from and why is it on my folder all feeder he writes across the folder oh my gosh yeah and you know the funny thing is one of the vets that I went through in trying to find a remedy for my dog literally like my dog's allergic to chicken he's like feed him this food I'm like it's chicken he said but they hydrolyzed it differently I said does it come from a chicken because he's still allergic to chicken right and for 10 minutes and every time still to this day every time I take my dog in if something's wrong they're like we need to test him in case he got some back bad bacteria from your raw that is never it no it's no never it no they just don't get it because no why would the bacteria part of the animal be put into the raw diet to begin with they have higher standards they have much higher standards they're not gonna put that type of ingredient you know it's not even nutritious my sister's dog is outside killing birds all the time right they can handle how they eat if they were in the wild right they can handle a lot of the more natural you know like salmonella things like this a lot of the natural dog foods are getting recalled over things that don't even make the pet sick yeah you know a lot of times it's the humans not gonna wash their hands sometimes it's just they didn't have like enough vitamins you know in it and it's really sad that it can take one complaint on a natural food diet to get a recall where but other food companies have had issues for years and they just keep getting like away in court you know they drop the cases nothing happens there's no accountability yet you can find proof all over the place that certain products that are very popular are very deadly to pets yes especially but every day twice a day or just because your your vet is recommending it or it says that recommended we have to remember there was a time when doctors smoked and cigarettes were refreshing yes so now speaking of that I happen to know for a fact that you go through all the ingredients on a label and check out all the ingredients you look them up yourself the staff members yes yeah before you let a product come into your store yes many moons ago when my husband and I were the only employees we we did all of that but now we have excellent staff and it is their mission I can go to a trade show and I think everything's great and nope there's to integrate us on this back you didn't catch this you didn't see that you know we call companies what color caramel color are you using is it one two three or four because we know that it's the way it's extruded and two of the numbers are okay because they're extruded without chemicals and two of the numbers are not because they're extruded with chemicals and those are going to be the ones that are going to be the cancer causing carcinogens when all of a sudden done being cooked now we can't get the answer from that company which one they're using we don't sell that product and then we'll tell you that's why we don't sell that product but here's a product that's similar you know and it's up to you if you want to go to another store and find that product you know great we'll support you when you come in we're not gonna be upset but we will continue to educate you exactly and that's the most important thing right so how long ago did this journey start how long have you had the store now 11 years yeah snow bells 12 and the store is 11 years how that's that is such an amazing journey so now I've come in the store each and every one of your employees is trained on everything no not all of them but the ones that are on the sales floor the warehouse staff now if you happen to see JT stocking something he's not going to be able to answer that in-depth question but he's going to get someone who can yes he might be able to answer some basic questions but so everybody in the store is knowledgeable but not as in-depth as some of the questions might be so but we always make sure that somebody like myself or Lizzie or John or my husband is always there when we're open or at least reachable so if something does come in we can do our best now sometimes we might have to do some research you know but a lot of the issues that come in foundation of health you just really break it down to getting rid of all of the fillers getting rid of the processed food try to get on less processed food you know more of the real what that you were saying in the wild the organ meat you know less they don't need they don't have what it takes to break down those gabbanzo beans and the peas and the potato all that stuff your dog is allergic to yeah when do they eat it in the wild it's something we've added to replace the fibers and things from their the body of the prey exactly you know that's why raw is like so awesome it's like praying a bag you know we're missing of course some a coat and stuff but you've got the organs and you've got the nutrition without all that cooking so your animal is able to assimilate it without having to use all this extra energy because when they have to break down the kibble their body just doesn't have what it needs so the liver the brain the kidneys have to kick into the stomach whatever liquid they have or body fluids whatever you want to call it so it can break down with that kibble and the body works just so hard to do that that the organs you know they're gonna be exhausted before they need to be absolutely so yeah I mean if you can feed the closest you can to what they would eat if you weren't involved you're gonna create a foundation of health so that when like ear aches or things like that might have been around for your animal it was able to shrug it off because it was eating what it really needed to get that foundation of help have that you know strong immune system so that the body can say yeah get out of here exactly you know instead of hey come party with me I think it's you know we can compare this to humans where we can say if we're putting the proper nutrients in our body we're gonna be able to fight things off but if we're not putting the proper new if we're eating all preservatives and processed foods our body isn't gonna have what it needs to fight off the normal things that's right the things that we need to fight off hundred percent absolutely so one of the questions I have now your dog has allergies yes my dog has allergies feeding the right diet the most helpful diet isn't only for allergies though no no I know that I every time I walk in your store there's a number of people there what other remedies can be had from feeding your dog the appropriate food you can actually aggression issues and pets not really getting along there's a lot of sugar when you break down in your body is using the all those carbs carbs run into sugar same thing happens to our pets the carbs run into sugar well if you're hyped up all the time you're not exactly on your nicest game so you're gonna have conflicts within the home because maybe one dog's crabby the other wants to play you know where when you're on a diet that doesn't spike you up like that you might be a little more in you know to get along well maybe I'll play a little bit because I don't really know where so that really does help I know it seems weird but when we go to the different classes with the veterinarians they talk a lot about getting the unnecessary sugars out of the diet just like our kids you wouldn't give your kids a bunch of sugar and then be shocked when they started fighting you know the birthday party is great until all the cake and ice cream comes out you know and then the kids are crying and the time to go home and melt down right and we wonder why our pets are different you know and they're really not they're really not so let's say somebody just can't bring themselves to feed their dog raw and I get that some people just get they're too nervous about it they're too freaked out about it maybe their financial situation doesn't allow it sure what is the next best type of food that they can feed well raw raw diet comes in freeze-dried it comes dehydrated it comes air-dried I like the air-dried version because it's less processing canned food is an option we want to look for as many cans as we can without the PBA in the lining and stuff but even kibble because when it comes to cost when you're thinking about cost sometimes the like a freeze-dried the dehydrated actually gonna cost more free frozen is really the best inexpensive way to buy the raw products and the least process or the most healthiest but sometimes people will buy kibble and the raw because they have a big dog even if they have small dogs it depends what their budget is what you can do is you can take and put water in that kibble so if the only thing you can do today is afford some free water go home get some free water from your tap put it into your dog's food let it soak in let it puff up that way your dog is not breaking down all that carb that's such a great tip oh my goodness that is such an amazing tip now do you have a you know the canned food the soft versus the kibble do you have a choice there or does that not is it really not as important um canned food is always going to be the preferred between those two because they are it's less process it's easier to assimilate you don't have to break it down for them to you know because you do lose a lot in the cooking of the kibble right but canned food is gonna be expensive compared to kibble so really again if you just do what you can if you wet down your kibble turn into canned food and that's the best you can do that's what you do if you can buy some good quality can because buying a bad quality can isn't gonna help nutrition wise okay so you make sure you're looking at the ingredients we want real meats no byproducts no starches you know we don't want any bad preservatives you know because you're not helping so find the most inexpensive can you can that's healthy we can totally help you with that at the store we have clearance items all the time where you can stock up you know and most of the time dogs are gonna eat canned food most of the time cats are gonna eat it it's not gonna be an issue of they won't they're getting finicky a lot of times they get finicky cuz it's hard to eat the product it's hard for cats to eat dry food it's hard for dogs to eat dry food you imagine how you feel when you eat something that's not so great and you get kind of queasy we want to feel queasy twice a day every day no and the dog can't tell you I'm feeling queasy right now because a lot of times they push that aside cuz they want to play you know they got that survivor of the fittest going on so they're not gonna show you right away they're not feeling good unless it's an exact reaction where you know like they eat and they throw up well then you know that's pretty pretty basic that's yeah that's pretty basic there but the the the really main thing that you want to do is for your budget and for the health of your pet is you want to put your money into your pet not your vet you know right don't save your money don't say I'm gonna skimp here because then you're gonna be giving it there right so most people love their pets you know more than they love a lot of people so you might as well take your resources your love your time you know your money and put it into the animal you love instead of waiting for a problem and putting it into the veterinarian exactly and that's what we really help you do an affordable way one of our main goals at the store is to make natural foods affordable you can't feed it if you can't afford it exactly and you do I mean it is one of those things where also if you don't feed the just like humans if you don't eat the right things now if you don't feed the right things now later on down the line you're going to end up paying for it in veterinary cost in health problems with your pet or with yourself right now speaking of that let's go to treats okay everybody wants to give their dog treats and you see all these treats on commercials and one of the things that I love about your store also is because my dog can only eat duck mm-hmm you have pure duck like you have duck liver duck neck duck feet I mean every part of that duck is you and my dog loves it yes so tell tell tell me a little bit about some because I can only go in the duck area but I know you check your treats just as strictly as you do your food yes people give a lot of treats you're eating three four five a day I mean you customer will say oh I don't give many it's three four five a day every day you know sometimes that can have more effect than the food especially with the ingredients and stuff so yes again we go through I really like the meat-based organ-based body part based treats because that's again you're gonna go in for what they're gonna get in the wild you're gonna get more nutrition you're treating with a purpose you know if it's like the duck feet you're talking about help clean your dog's teeth I'm also is helping with go close to me because it's natural go close to me so it's gonna help with some hip and joint issues you know and you don't get that out of a lot of the treats that are on the market today I can have people come into the store and they're doing everything they can food-wise and it's something is just not jiving with the dogs not getting as well as you think or something's not dissipating like you think it would and it turns out they're feeding a low-value treat yeah or they're getting that treat at the bank every third day when they go you know and treats are so important you know do you have to be mindful with everything you put in your pet's mouth exactly exactly and you also offer a number of supplements and what I call is it a pedipathic area yes I love pedipathic area oh my goodness and some herbs some really good minerals and herbs and herb Smith very local types of different for everything from we have essential oils and we have the different they smell I can't think of the name right now but you smell them and they help and then you have all the tinctures we have powdered you know whatever way your pet needs to get it we have them in capsules and chewables you cook out even the slightly processed foods you're still cooking out a lot of the nutrients so to get it back in that's where the supplements come into play because you're getting it in and a good dosage right yeah the food can boast it's got good close to meat in it but the majority of it was cooked out right so really you need to add these supplements into the diets and as soon as possible you a lot of times puppy on you want to do the close to me and you want to do the enzymes and the probiotics you know because you got to get in there you got to keep the system going you can't keep your car running if you don't have oil in it exactly you know it's not gonna work you got to change that oil you got to change the air filter you know you got to do some maintenance you know so you have to stay up on the maintenance of your pet and for some pets it's a necessity they need some of if they start to get arthritis if they start to get some of that heart problem sure there are supplements for pets just like there are supplements to help people oh yeah we have kidney and liver supplements you know you've got heart supplements you have supplements that are good just overall like they've got some hip and joint they got some daily stuff they got some enzymes you know so we have individualized we have all together all different types what but the important thing is that the staff knows how to tell you which one to use for the condition you're describing exactly you know that's the big thing so let's out we just have a couple minutes left okay tell everybody where you're located sure we're at 5835 West Blue Mound Road the Tiley Road in Blue Mound in Milwaukee right and your website address is Milwaukee pet food calm excellent excellent Carrie I want to thank you so much for being such a magnificent guest and you more so I want to thank you because without you I don't know if I would have found what my dog needed when he needed it well he needed it right away I wish I would have found it sooner and that's part of why this show is so important to me too because there are so many people out there that have pets they have no idea what's like they know something's wrong with their pet right but their vet is leading them down the same road mm-hmm I totally think that need another door to open right right I'm so lucky I had that but that's a groomer in my life and I want to be my groomer to everybody else absolutely you know yeah the information has got to be there absolutely you're welcome thanks for having me my pleasure you have been watching create a life you love remember only you can take control of your life and take your passion turn it into your career and your purpose so what's burning inside of you what is it that you really are passionate about go out do it and make yourself have an amazing life this has been Tony Green you can reach me on my website www.tonig.info and I'm also on Facebook Twitter and a couple of other social media things that I can't remember thanks for watching have an amazing life