Brenda Flood bakes all-natural snacks for pets in her home kitchen
There is an art to pampering a pup. Some stick with milk bones and a monthly bath, while others are a bit more elaborate with their puppy love — tutus and bathing suits and pink-frosted pupcakes.
Brenda Flood, the owner and baker of Ruby’s Naturals pet treats, sticks to a much simpler pampering plan: an all-natural diet.
Flood, who founded the company in Massachusetts, makes completely natural dog, cat and horse treats — down to freshly squeezed, organic apple pulp — in her kitchen in Winnsboro, S.C.
She sells them online to clients across the country and internationally and spends Saturdays at the Soda City Farmers Market on Main Street. They are also at Rosewood Market and in the process of being carried at the Columbia Whole Foods.
Her mission is to share the importance of good nutrition and get good, healthy treats to Columbia pets.
“It’s just like us: If you eat better, you’re going to feel better,” Flood said.
Flood bakes three flavors of Ruby’s Naturals: beef liver and sweet potato, chicken liver and pumpkin and vegetarian delight. The ingredients list is short — that’s part of the appeal.
She buys the chicken and beef liver, boils and bakes it. The kale in the chicken and pumpkin treats is from Flood’s personal garden and all of the eggs come from her cage-free chickens, which are on a strict fruit and vegetable diet.
Flood and her family live on a 10-and-a- half-acre farm in Winnsboro with horses, chickens, a bunny, a Jack Russell terrier and three Great Danes.
Ruby, of Ruby’s Naturals, was Flood’s “heart and soul dog,” a Great Dane. Ruby died four years ago, but the breed has long been a part of Flood’s story.
“They’re kind of like living with a huge 3-year-old child all the time,” Flood said.
At one point, she showed Great Danes professionally. She has champions as far as Finland and Nova Scotia, and when she started baking the all-natural dog goodies, she sent out about 50 bags of test treats to her gaggle of refined, picky-paletted show pups.
But Flood’s love of animals began way before the champion’s circle. She started rescuing birds and reaching out to abandoned animals in the fourth grade.
“I would feed everything,” she said.
Flood went to an agricultural high school for animal science and worked as a paralegal for 10 years before she graduated from a two-year program for canine nutrition in July 2011.
“I’ve always had an interest in the good nutrition of animals, because I recognize the benefits of it,” Flood said. “Their coat, their teeth, their eyes, their skin — It affects everything.”
After graduating from the nutrition program, Flood started doing consultations on dog nutrition. Owners would reach out to her with dogs with severe skin allergies or diseases like pancreatitis. She even had people who just weren’t satisfied with the quality of commercial dog food. The consultations were rewarding, but not satisfying, Flood said.
“I wasn’t able to get out there, meet the people and see the happiness,” she said.
That is when Flood decided to combine her love of cooking and her love for animal nutrition. She opened the Divine Canine, a 3,000 square foot all-natural pet supplies store in Massachusetts. It was everything she loved under one roof, but as the owner and baker, she was spending 80 hours per week at the shop — away from her family.
Flood moved to South Carolina a year and a half ago. At first, she bred Great Danes from Winnsboro, but last March, she delivered her last litter and refocused on Ruby’s Naturals.
Each batch of treats takes between two and three hours to make, and then the greater batch is divvied into four-ounce, freeze-locked bags.
“Now that I have been doing it a while, I have it down to a science,” Flood said.
She makes the treats every week, and unless you make your own, you’re not going to get anything fresher for your dog, she said.
The fresh-squeezed apple juice is the best story of the baking process: She cores and juices organic apples for their pulp, and then gives the juice to her kids to drink.
“It’s a win-win,” Flood said.
She not only tested the treats with her former show dogs, but her horses as well.
“My horses have to be the pickiest horses alive,” Flood said.
She would have to give herself pep talks before testing out a batch on her hooved pets: “If they don’t like it, it’s OK. Just keep trying,” she remembered telling herself.
Once she found the pleasing treat, she knew she had gold.
“Twenty minutes later, they were still licking their lips,” she said.
Flood said her “return rate” is 90 to 95 percent — that many pups come back for more Ruby’s Naturals. There is one lab, in particular, that comes to the Soda City Market: Parker.
“No matter where I am, he will drag his parents over to my table,” Flood said. “He just stares.”