Pup, pup and away Young entrepreneur turned her side gig baking all-natural dog treats into a thriving canine concern By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, Jun. 26, 2021 Last Modified: 9:29 AM CDT Saturday, Jun. 26, 2021 Updates

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This article was published 26/06/2021 (1589 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GIMLI — Something smells yummy.

Jordan Welch, a commercial fisherman from Gimli, arrived home recently following a long day at work. Walking through the house he shares with his girlfriend, Sierra Lathlin, he picked up the scent of cinnamon, which he ultimately traced to a plate of cookies cooling on a kitchen counter. No sooner had he taken a nibble out of one than Lathlin entered the room, yelling, “Hey, those are for the dogs!”

“He looked at me, looked at the cookie and popped the rest in his mouth, saying, ‘Whatever, tastes all right to me,’” says Lathlin, founder of Barkery Dog Treats, an Interlake-based online store that turns out all-natural, preservative-free goodies for your furry friend, including biscuits, doggie doughnuts, even “pup tarts,” the personable entrepreneur’s sugar-free take on the popular Kellogg’s toaster pastry.

“There’s nothing in my stuff that you or I can’t eat,” she continues, offering a scribe a free sample (thanks, but we just had lunch). “The only difference pretty much is that I dehydrate everything once it’s ready in order to extend the shelf life. That makes it a bit crunchier, not that any dogs are complaining.”

Lathlin, 24, was born and raised in Opaskwayak Cree Nation, near The Pas. A dog lover for as long as she can remember, she was 18 when she adopted Toby, a Great Pyrenees. He was a rescue, just six weeks old when she brought him home. She wasn’t familiar with his breed beforehand so was more than a little surprised when he eventually tipped the scale at more than 100 pounds.

“I mean, I’m 100 pounds soaking wet, so who was walking who?” she says with a laugh, adding she latched onto a second pet, Anna, a shepherd-Lab mix, after a breakup. “Any boyfriend I broke up with, I ended up with their dog somehow. My mom told me I had better stop dating guys with dogs or I was going to have 10 before I knew it.”

With Toby and Anna in tow, Lathlin left OCN for Winnipeg in 2015 to study computer science at the University of Winnipeg. She and Welch began dating two years later. She and her entourage moved in with him and his pooch Hilti after she graduated in the spring of 2019. A couple of weeks later she landed a marketing manager position at Gimli Veterinary Services.

It was around that same time when she began preparing treats from scratch for Toby, Anna and Hilti, convinced whatever came out of her oven would be healthier than what was available in the pet aisle at the grocery store. She probably would have been content baking for their dogs alone, except a lightbulb went on in her head the second she spotted a poster advertising a craft sale at the Gimli Rec Centre in September 2019. Since Toby, Anna and Hilti were such big fans of her cooking, maybe other dogs would be too.

“I showed up (at the sale) with four different treats, including my peanut butter trainers and fresh breath mints containing mint and parsley,” she says, adding Barkery, the name she chose for her fledgling biz, came to her one morning out of the blue. “I made $300 and was like, woo-hoo, I’m rich.”

Lathlin spent the next 10 months splitting her time between her full-time job at the clinic and baking treats to sell at whatever craft sale came along. That all came to a screeching halt in July 2020, when, while she was in Winnipeg shopping, a friend called to say Toby had been the victim of a hit-and-run accident and needed to be euthanized immediately.

Crushed, she gave her bosses two weeks’ notice, telling them she was finding it too difficult to be around other animals that were sick or dying. She spent the next several days holed up in her bedroom, mourning her loss. Finally, not wanting Toby’s death to be in vain, she got out a pen and paper and scribbled down his favourite things to munch on — beef liver biscuits, cheese-apple bites and banana-oatmeal cookies, to name a few. The time had come to devote her full attention to Barkery Dog Treats, she’d decided; to her way of thinking, she’d already lost Toby, so what else did she have to lose?

The initial thing Lathlin did — besides adopt a new dog, Rocky, another Great Pyrenees — was develop a website to advertise her full line (six-pack of dehydrated rabbit feet, anyone?). Next she Googled the phone numbers of pet stores, doggie daycares and dog groomers, not just in Manitoba, but across North America.

“I searched by annual revenue then got on the phone, explaining to the owner or whoever answered what I was all about,” she says, explaining because her treats don’t contain any dairy, she is able to ship across Canada as well as south of the border. “It’s not like I had much experience yet, or any customer reviews to speak of. It was more a case of me letting them know how passionate I am about what I do, and getting them to believe in me.”

Her message must have resonated: since last August she has gained retail clients from every province and territory, as well as in close to a dozen U.S. states, including Texas, California, Rhode Island and Delaware. Lathlin also ventured into the world of social media influencers. Familiar with how popular certain doggie Instagram accounts are — Nashville’s Doug the Pug, for example, has 3.8 million followers, 3.8 million more than a certain newspaper scribe — she began offering lifetime 50 per cent discounts to dog owners who were willing to offer her a bit of, you know, paws-itive feedback.

Currently, Lathlin, the lone Manitoban and one of only 40 Canadians invited to take part in a virtual G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance Summit held last September in Saudi Arabia, has her schedule down pat: field orders, bake, package, ship, repeat. She offers free local delivery on private orders, and counts stops in Winnipeg as local, not minding the 50-minute commute she undertakes, sometimes twice a week, in the least.

“It gives me time to think about new recipes and also what direction I want to take things next,” she says, mentioning her primary goal these days is to move the entire operation out of her and Welch’s kitchen, and into a dedicated space of its own.

Lathlin admits she sometimes has to pinch herself to make sure it isn’t all a dream. Growing up, she never entertained the thought of running a business of her own; her mother is a health-care aide, her late father drove a truck and she can’t remember a single friend’s parent who had their own company. Now that she is a successful entrepreneur, though, she is doing everything in her power to pay it forward by encouraging others, especially those from Opaskwayak Cree Nation, to follow her lead.

“It’s super-important to me as an Indigenous woman with her own business to get people to believe in themselves, too,” she says, brushing a few strands of hair away from her face. “I reached out to my old high school last fall, letting them know I’m available to talk to students who might have an idea for this or that. And while I can’t travel there currently because of restrictions, I am also involved with the band office and when the time is right, my intent is to visit and chat with anybody, young or old, who’s thinking of starting a business of their own.”

There is one problem with that plan.

“Back home there tend to be a lot of strays running around, and it will be be incredibly difficult not to head back to Gimli without a few new ‘babies’ in the backseat,” she says, grinning from ear to ear.

For more information, go to thebarkerydogtreats.com.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca