Fetch!

Davis Dog Treats has dogs begging for more By Wendy O. Dixon

As a dog-friendly town, Seaside welcomes dogs to shop at the Seaside Farmers Market each Saturday with their humans as they pick up fresh produce, honey, grass-fed beef and other items sold by local vendors. Also at the market, Davis Dog Treats sells all-natural gourmet treats for your pets, offering a variety of flavors that are sure to please man’s best friend.

Davis Dog Treats was started as a way for Kenneth Davis, an eighth grader at Seaside Neighborhood School, to earn extra money. After a news story about potentially harmful ingredients found in store-bought treats, Davis decided to make homemade treats for his beloved four-legged friends.

“I wanted our dogs to have healthy treats and found a recipe in a cookbook I bought at school,” he says. “We didn’t have all of the ingredients, so my mom helped me improvise and we came up with a basic recipe and added different flavors.” Beef, chicken, cheese and peanut butter flavored treats were concocted in July of 2012 and eventually liver, maple bacon, bacon cheeseburger and even a breath buster featuring parsley and mint were added to the mix.

Now that he’s in college, Nancy Davis, his mother, has taken over the business. Each week, she bakes and dehydrates, preparing the various treats to take to the market. She encourages dogs to come and sample a treat to find out which is their favorite. “I know all the dogs’ names,” she says, “but not necessarily their people’s names.”

Davis is thrilled to see the dogs enjoy her made-with-love treats. “We have samples of all flavors in dog bowls so they can test and see what they like,” Nancy says. “If a customer is shopping without their dog, I’ll send home a bag with some samples of doggie treats.”

The baked treats come in eight flavors, and some grain-free and dehydrated treats. Her three expert taste testers, Sassy, Peanut and Prissy, eagerly manage the quality control. “Peanut’s favorite is the Breath Buster, a baked treat made with parsley and mint,” she says. “Prissy’s favorite is the grass-fed beef liver chips. And Sassy will eat anything.”

Davis Dog Treats also offers all-natural bar soap for dogs, made by another Seaside Farmers Market vendor, the Soap Pedaler. “It’s great for sensitive skin,” Nancy says of the lemongrass-scented soap. “It deters bugs, and it smells wonderful. You can use it on yourself too.”

Davis Dog Treats are sold at the Seaside Farmers Market every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

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Davis Dog Treats & Seaside Farmers Market