Intro to Bear's Bites!
It is finally blog time, this has been a long time coming. Let me start by introducing myself to everyone.
I am Samm Hutchison. I am the owner/founder of Bear’s Bites. I do it all!
The story of Bear’s Bites:
What seems like yesterday has now been over 5 years ago that I started Bear’s Bites.
I have been making dog treats for my dogs for over 15 years now. Our dog Sarge had food allergies and that long ago there was as much information about food allergies and dog food as there is now. It has come a long way and I am constantly learning.
Our poor Sarge had bad symptoms of allergies. He would lick his paws, get ear infections, and scratch himself raw. Sarge had food allergies to chicken. We did not know this at first but that was what I suspected. We had him allergy tested, the skin test. Out of 30 items, he was allergic to 28 of them. This included food and environmental. Chicken was not one of them. Our vet at the time had us put him on Science Diet Z/D which I was very skeptical of because it is hydrolyzed chicken. (I will get into this further later about how this is made, it’s gross) I was told that there would not be a problem because of the way it was processed. Well, Sarge still had an allergic reaction to it. That is when I started my journey into researching dog food. It took me about 6 months to find out that the quality of the ingredients of dog food were gross and there were only 5 dog foods on the market that did not have any kind of chicken in them. I got Sarge on one of them and he did amazing. When we adopted Tank, that poor boy had horrible allergies, we had him tested also but this time it was a blood test. Bet you can’t guess what the test said he wasn’t allergic to….chicken. Having the knowledge that I had I got him on Sarge’s food and his symptoms started to go away. Tank’s symptoms were a little worse than Sarges. Tank would get bad ear infections, loose his hair, lick his feet and dig his skin raw. Once getting him setup on Sarge’s food, Tanks hair started to grow back, and all ear infections started to go away. Once I got the boys on food that was the right fit, I started looking for treats they could eat. All of the ingredients that I was looking at had some form of chicken in that and a lot of ingredients that I could not pronounces and that is when I decided that if I didn’t want to eat it then the boys were not going to either so I had one of those little dehydrators that you would buy at Farm and Fleet and I started making their treats. I made the boys dehydrated, organic bananas and sweet potatoes. They loved them!
Fast forward to adopting Bear….
When we adopted Bear, I was so excited for him to get this great treats. Anyone that knows Bear knows he is a bit of a treat snob; I did not do this. The day we picked Bear up from his foster home I was so excited for him to have these great treats and he would not even put them in his mouth. He crunched the sweet potatoes all over the floor of my car. This is when I decided to start making meat treats. We found a local farm that was up to my standards because YES, our treats were better meat then what we were eating at the time. I started to make Bear beef liver treats.
In November of 2017 I told Mike that I was going to start a dog treat company. He looked at me like I was crazy, this is a look I get a lot. After a couple of months of learning how to start a business, I launched Bear’s Bites on Feb 8th 2018.
Just 5 short years later we have gone nationwide, started the Bear’s Bites Foundation to help with emergency medical needs of family pets and opened the Bear’s Boutique. It has been an amazing journey and I can not wait to see what the future holds.