Lower East Sider Annette Frey’s professional life has gone to the dogs — and she couldn’t be happier. Thanks to her pit bull-beagle mix Lambchop, the former physical therapist found her true calling: creating artisanal dog treats.
It all started in 2003, when Lambchop started to suffer from kidney failure, digestive problems and food allergies. Because of his various health issues, Lambchop needed a diet that was low in both fat and phosphorus — but of the available brands on the market, the foods lowest in phosphorus tended to be the highest in fat.
Stuck without a viable alternative, Frey started cooking for Lambchop to find a happy medium.
“I made batches of pasta, beef, turkey and vegetables, then mixed and matched them,” says Frey, who schooled herself in K9 nutrition by consulting veterinarians and doing extensive research online, in books and at medical school libraries.
But custom-cooked dinners alone weren’t cutting the mustard. Dogs being dogs, Lambchop begged for between-meal treats — which he also couldn’t have. So Frey rose to the challenge by creating a healthy treat her dog could safely eat: a tasty morsel that’s free of gluten, wheat, corn, rice, dairy, eggs, nuts, animal protein and preservatives.
Lambchop loved his custom-baked banana-vanilla-coconut-flavored treats so much, he’d sit for one without even being asked.
Soon enough, the owners of Lambchop’s many K9 friends at the dog park started asking Frey for samples, and pretty soon they were urging her to go into business.
Sadly, just as she started her business in June 2005, Lambchop — whom Frey calls the “Foreman and Fearless Leader” — passed away, “not of his many health issues, but of old age,” Frey says.
In his honor, a grieving Frey forged ahead and created Biscuits by Lambchop LLC. The biz started out small, but immediately caught the attention of uber-chic vegan bakery BabyCakes, purveyors of gluten-free, dairy-free sweet treats for humans. At just $1.50 a piece, the doggie biscuits always sold out fast.
In fact, demand grew so quickly that Frey no longer trades in small batches. She sells packaged K9 cookies
online, at biscuitsbylambchop.com, and at Bark Place on East 72nd Street. She recently introduced a second, star-shaped treat called Starlets, in honor of her new dog and “Chief Cookie Officer,” Starr, a sweet mutt adopted from the Humane Society of Atlantic City. The apple-honey-cinnamon-flavored Starlets are even lower in fat!
“If you’d told me 10 years ago I’d be making dog treats for a living, I’d have looked at you funny,” she concludes, “but this is really just problem-solving for dogs — it’s not that different from the physical therapy work I used to do.”
And for that, New York’s hungry dogs are grrrateful.
js@pet-reporter.com