I'll be honest with you: I'm not a pet nutritionist. I didn't go to school for this. What I do have is a kitchen, a dog who means the world to me, and a simple rule: if I can't pronounce it, I don't bake with it.
When I started making treats for Piper, I'd flip over bags of store-bought treats and find ingredient lists that looked like a chemistry textbook. Preservatives, artificial flavours, fillers, things I'd never heard of. I'd stand there wondering: do I really want to feed this to my dog? The answer was always no.
So I started simple. Peanut butter. Sweet potatoes. Chicken. Eggs. Things I buy for my own kitchen. Things I understand.
Now, every treat we bake at 2 Treats Down starts with that same question: would I be happy eating this myself? If the answer's yes, it goes in the bowl. If I have to Google an ingredient to know what it is, it stays out.
What that looks like in practice
Our peanut butter biscuits? Peanut butter, a touch of sweetness, baked simple. That's it. Our sweet potato chews? One ingredient: sweet potato, sliced and dehydrated. Our pupcakes? Flour based with peanut butter and carrot, our bestseller. Every ingredient serves a purpose. No filler, no extras.
This is also why we don't make wild claims about our treats. I'm not here to tell you these are a complete diet or a medical solution. They're treats: real food treats made with simple ingredients I trust.
What we don't do
We don't claim to accommodate every allergy. If your dog needs a specific protein or a seed butter substitute, our kitchen might not be the right fit, and that's okay. We'd rather be honest about what we can and can't do.
We also draw a line between our treats and our celebration cakes. Treats are everyday rewards: crunchy biscuits, crunchy jerky, soft pupcakes. Our cakes are something special: custom, layered, decorated. Different products, different purposes. Both made with the same simple-ingredient philosophy.
The short version
I use ingredients I know. I keep the list short. I don't use anything I can't pronounce. And I'd rather you know exactly what's in the bag than wonder.
That's it. That's the whole philosophy.