EP 420. Feed the Beast–Inukshuk Professional Dog Food

A Dog Food Cure

Ramsey Russell: I’m your host, Ramsey Russell. Join me here to listen to those conversations. What you up to today, Alan?

Alan Sandifer: Taking care of the young dogs. Mandy is at the national in Georgia with the big dogs, so somebody had to stay here and take care of baby.

Ramsey Russell: Hey, I cannot get Char dog tired. She is in amazing shape. Between your conditioning program and hunting all the time, she’ll go and pick up 75 or 80 ducks and geese in Canada, big geese, and while we’re getting all picked up, she’s out combing the countryside looking for more work. She’s a tireless animal, and the reason I’m calling you today Alan, is to ask you about this dog food I’ve started feeding her for the last couple of years that you turned me on to you. A couple of years ago. I was either bringing Char or dropping her off or bringing her down there, and you turned me on to a dog food. It had a funny name named Inukshuk, and you were showing me the back of the bags and what the nutrients were and stuff like that. Why did you start feeding that dog food?

Alan Sandifer: Well, Inukshuk’s, the only brand we will mention, but we fed it all. Food reps call this is the next best thing. Want you to try it, and it just didn’t work. They’re all capable of making great dog food, but when they go to changing formulas and I know you can’t stay in business if you ain’t making money, but you go to raising the prices, you go to shortcut and stuff. In my opinion, the dog food goes down in value for the dog. I’m not talking about the value for me. We just stumbled across this really, because we go north for the summer and this is actually made in Canada.

Ramsey Russell: It is made in Nova Scotia.

Alan Sandifer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You were showing me all kinds of stuff, but what you’re saying is when you’re talking about the value to the dog. You’re talking about the performance value to the dogs that you’re training.

Alan Sandifer: Right. I tell you, on some of the major brands, we had constant ear problems.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Fueling the Machine

Corn, wheat, yeast and the recovery time on the dogs is unbelievable and if you look at their coats, their skin and their coat will tell you because, our bodies and the dog’s bodies, the inside is a working machine. 

Alan Sandifer: Yeast infections, and when we switched to this, that problem just solved itself. We feed the Marine-25, 30% protein, 25% fat. It has no chicken, no corn and no wheat. Let’s think about it. Corn, wheat, yeast and the recovery time on the dogs is unbelievable and if you look at their coats, their skin and their coat will tell you because, our bodies and the dog’s bodies, the inside is a working machine. When you eat, your body takes the nutrients and ships it to the part that needs it the most. Dogs, the same way. You see a dog, that coat don’t look real good, their conditioning don’t look real good and somebody says, well, I’m feeding them 6 cups a day. There’s a lot of filler in that food, there’s a lot of waste.

Ramsey Russell: Not Inukshuk and a lot of other dog food you’re saying.

Alan Sandifer: In the other dog foods. With Inukshuk our 80 pound dogs, working dogs eat 2 cups a day that were eating 6 cups of one of the other major brands.

Ramsey Russell: Now, you told me one time, Alan, how many calories you estimate that one of your working dogs like Char or other dogs are burning an average day of running through drills and getting trained. What would you estimate their, their caloric output is?

Alan Sandifer: I had it wrote down and I don’t know what I know.

Ramsey Russell: I got it written down. You told me between 3500 and 4000 calories in one day.

Alan Sandifer: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s means more than I burn in a day.

Alan Sandifer: You take this dog food, most of them are 30-20. 20% fat, this is 25% fat. The fat is what they use for energy. The protein keeps their muscles built and all of that, but they actually burn fat.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Alan Sandifer: When you look at our dog’s coats, because I know Char has one too. It’s like you’ve oiled them down.

Ramsey Russell: Char’s coat gleams like freshly blue gunmetal, and the muscle definition, she looks like an Olympic weightlifter. It’s unbelievable. Here’s the point, Char is not a pet. I love her to death. She sleeps on the bed with me, most places. But I’m saying this, she is a high-performance athlete and I would say that about every single dog you’ve got in the kennel. How many dogs do you all normally have there at Gator point?

Alan Sandifer: 48.

Ramsey Russell: 48 dogs or high performance athletes.

Alan Sandifer: Yeah, 20 something of the big dogs and then we got the younger ones that’s coming up that hopefully become big dogs.

Ramsey Russell: Yep.

Alan Sandifer: This dog food is unreal. Like for instance, this is a biggie for us because we do breed also. We were having small litters on other brands, smaller litters, some dogs wasn’t even conceiving and I can tell you the last 3 litters born here was 10, 10 and 12.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Alan Sandifer: Their heat cycles seem to have on a regular basis when on the other foods, sometimes you may go a year dog wasn’t coming in heat, you would have split heat. I don’t know, I’m sold on it. I’m glad I sold you on it. I had sold many a person on it.

Ramsey Russell: Well, you sold me on it. I tend to feed her just a little bit more while we’re hunting continuously and steadily than I would.

Alan Sandifer: She needs that

Ramsey Russell: I split her portions. Say I’m going to feed her 3 cups a day regular time. I feed her 2 cups in the morning, two cups later, and by the morning, I mean post hunt. Then I fear I feed her at night and, her energy levels are through the roof. I know this because I guess I’ve worked with you and known you Alan, for 15 years, a long time, 20 years, and I have seen you feed every single major name brand performance dog food out there.

Alan Sandifer: I’ve tried it all.

Ramsey Russell: But you like this Inukshuk the best.

Alan Sandifer: I do. I go back to some of papa’s mentality, I guess. I did my own little test with a Dixie, solo cup. I put one cup of Inukshuk in one cup, one cup of another major brand in the other cup. I added one cup of water to each. The other brand floated up, the Inukshuk stayed at the bottom. 30 minutes later, I come back and poured them out. The Inukshuk cup, you could have rinsed it and drank out of it. That other cup had I don’t know what you call-

Ramsey Russell: Slush

Alan Sandifer: You had to scrape it with a putty knife to get it out.

Ramsey Russell: Alan, when I feed Inukshuk on the road, every single bowl of food that I give to Char, I put water. I fill it up with water, because I’ve noticed that when we’re traveling a lot, hunting a lot, if the weather gets cold, she really doesn’t tend to hydrate as well and by putting water in her bowl, she’s going to have to hydrate. So I put the water in there and you’re right that she has to drink the water to get down to the food.

Alan Sandifer: We call that floating the food. The only thing with the Inukshuk over another major brand is it don’t float.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s a great comparison.

Alan Sandifer: Here’s something else. I got buddies all over the United States and in Canada that run dogs, and they give me the spill. Oh, you switch just because of price. No, I didn’t. The price is not what’s best for the dog. But I will say, comparing price the Inukshuk is half the price. I speed half the food. So, as papa would say, two halves make a whole.

Ramsey Russell: Papa was never wrong.

Alan Sandifer: No, I thought he was crazy, but the older I get, I realize he was smart.

Ramsey Russell: Yep. I appreciate you, Alan. I appreciate you turning me on Inukshuk.

Alan Sandifer: You bet, buddy.

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. That was Alan Sandifer of Gator Point Kennels. You all know him from previous episodes. You all know that he and his wife have been training professionally for over 30 years. Gator Point Kennels has turned out lots of great dogs to include Char dogs. He is the one that turned me on to Inukshuk. Right now, Inukshuk is kind of one of those things. In professional dog circles, it is gaining huge momentum and for really good reasons. Joining me all the way from northeast Canada to explain why Inukshuk is the greatest professional dog food a lot of you all may not yet have heard of is Mr. Brian Conoley. Brian, how the heck are you, man?

Brian Conoley: I’m doing fantastic, Ramsey. I’m very excited to be on this call and to have the ear of your audience for a little bit of time. So thank you so much for the opportunity.

Ramsey Russell: You all are from Newfoundland, is that right? Maritime Canada?

Brian Conoley: Not quite that far east. Newfoundland is off the coast of the Maritime, so we’re in New Brunswick, and we share a border with Maine. We’re about an hour away from the Maine border. I didn’t know New Brunswick until I moved to New Brunswick. I grew up in Ontario. It’s one of the more forgotten and just like our dog food is one of the best kept secrets in Canada and North America-

Ramsey Russell: Eastern Canada all run together. I hunt with some guys from Nova Scotia, and I was telling you about them before we started recording. We all hunt out in Saskatchewan, and everybody in western Saskatchewan calls them the newfies. Now, they’re from Nova Scotia but when you lump all those provinces together into Newfie and I guess I’m just as guilty of it.

Brian Conoley: We do that with the south in the states too. if you’re from the south, we might think southeast or southwest. A lot of us don’t know. Well, he sounds like he’s from the south. So, we clump you up here in Canada. Don’t worry about that.

The Dog Food That Changed Everything

Speaking of my newfie buddies, I was in Saskatchewan, and I’ve been feeding Char Inukshuk dog food. Now she’s in her second season, and I ain’t never going back to nothing else. It’s unbelievable.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I was in North Dakota one time. I spoke to them, and they heard my accent. They’re like, where are you from? I go South Dakota, and they bust out laughing, because obviously, I’m not from South Dakota Brian. Speaking of my newfie buddies, I was in Saskatchewan, and I’ve been feeding Char Inukshuk dog food. Now she’s in her second season, and I ain’t never going back to nothing else. It’s unbelievable. We’ll talk about why. I travel, and I put the dog food in 5-gallon buckets with lids on it. Very easy to access. It keeps it out of the weather and knowing I was going to be on the road for a couple of months, I threw a sack on the floorboard of my truck, non-open. So when I run out of buckets, I can open it up, pour it in there, refill. My Nova Scotia buddies saw that dog food, and they’re like, what the heck do you know about Inukshuk? I said, hey, man, that’s all I’ve been feeding char dog. Why do you think she kicks ass like she does? They were surprised because they thought that was their food. I’m saying, because you all are from Canada, so as we got to talking, they’ve been feeding this food since forever, and they cannot think of a single hunter or anybody that trains any kind of sporting animal that feeds anything other than Inukshuk. What a small world, you know? I guess the point I’m trying to make is this, Inukshuk right now, really is this dog food that is starting to kind of just make its way around serious dog people. It’s more and more and more people that I talk to are aware of this dog food now. I brought Alan on at the front of this thing because Alan feeds a lot of high calibers, high power trained field Labs all day, every day, every single wake up moment of life, that’s what that man is doing. He expects the utmost of those animals that he trains, the same as their owners do. I never will forget going down to either pickup or drop off Char dog one time that he broke out his phone and said, let me show you this, and he started breaking out this telling me about this funny named food because Inukshuk is funny. We’re going to get it. That’s a funny name. We’re going to get into that in just a minute and showing me the ingredients that go into it, the energy outputs. He was explaining to me the energy demands of what? Of the calories, the sheer calories that Char is expending when she is down in his kennels or when she’s with me on the road retrieving lots of geese and ducks and why he was going to go to this food. He is not ever going back to anything else. He has probably fed every name brand, lottie dye, high caliber dog food that’s ever come down the pipe, and he is stuck as everybody just heard the reasons why he is stuck on Inukshuk dog food? I want to back up just a little bit and talk about the name of Inukshuk. What is Inukshuk? What the heck is Inukshuk? And how’d you all come up with a name like that?

Brian Conoley: Sure. So originally, Inukshuk had a different name. It was called Musher’s Choice. Even though that’s pretty direct, it’s not very expansive to who we service now. So we made a switch to Inukshuk. So Inukshuk, the logo on the bag, it’s those stacks of rocks. As long as people live in people and they’re out in nature, we’ve been stacking rocks, but particularly how it applies to kind of our origins in our genesis story is that sled dogs, mushers, our original target audience for Inukshuk in the north, in Canada, in the north part of North America and Alaska as well, Inukshuks used to be built up as food caches and also waypointers. So if you had your sled dogs and you were going across the frozen tundra and you saw an Inukshuk, the way that the rock was pointing, you’ll notice that it’s a little bit narrower, pointing to the left on our particular logo, that means keep going to the left and sometimes there’d be food caches underneath these Inukshuks as well. So they were a big part of the heritage and the way home for these sled dog drivers, getting from point A to point B. So when we first made the product, we were building it for sled dogs. Our owner, Lee, he’s a marketing guy. His wheels are always spinning and he was on this hike, and he had this product, Musher’s choice still at that time. He wanted to bring it out into the dog food world because he knew he was sitting on something special and we’ll talk about what makes us special, as his conversation goes on. But he was struggling with that name. He thought it was limiting. He thought it wasn’t enough. It didn’t have that marketing pop that he likes his stuff to have. He went on a vacation, and he went to Machu Picchu in Peru, and he’s on top of, these beautiful mountains, and he’s looking out and he sees these Inukshuks, just like in the North all over, that people have been building as they’re completing their hike in these beautiful mountains, and he thought, well this is it. Inukshuk is what I want. He came down off that mountain. He got back on a plane, and he got back into the offices here, and he said, I’ve got it. We’re rebranding. That was about 20 years ago, how Inukshuk was born. So Inukshuk is that actual stone statue logo that’s on our bags, and it’s very iconic in Canada. We have a strong connection to our indigenous people, the Inuit people up north. It’s one of their words, but we like to think that we have a shared culture, and they inform us as we have informed them and of course, we’ve got some bridges to build with all those matters, the same way a lot of countries do. We’re very proud of the northern heritage and the iconography of the Inukshuk. So that’s where that came from.

Ramsey Russell: I’m glad you all changed the name, because Musher’s Choice, you start talking sled dog and that’s like talking hockey to a southern boy. I just happen to know that a musher is a guy on back of a sled, making his dogs run ahead of him. There may not be any other sporting breed that expends as much energy or requires as much energy as a sled dog, is it? They’re in extremely cold weather. They’re pulling all that weight. They’re running for God knows how many miles a day. Is there any other breed that requires as much caloric input as a sled dog?

Brian Conoley: Not really. Sled dogs with their job going 20, 30 miles across some of the roughest, coldest terrain with heavy loads. They’re the ones who need our rocket fuel the most and that’s why it was originally developed for them, because there was a hole in the market. What we realized was that hole actually expands to a lot of other people. So, right underneath sled dogs, I would say your belgian Malinois police and protection dogs, they’re very popular dogs in those realms. Those guys just vibrate weight off in their sleep. They’re some of the hardest keeping dogs. So even though they might not be working as hard as the endurance athlete sled dog, day in, day out, during race season, they still have a really high drive and have a high need for a high fat, high protein diet as well. The reason we went from musher’s choice to Inukshuk is we realized we’ve got something here that a lot of dogs can take advantage of and benefit from. It’s not just mushers. I’m talking to you. You’re not a musher, and I’m not a musher, although I’ve dabbled. There’re hunters, there’s high energy dogs doing lots of jobs all over the world and that’s what our podcast, the pro podcast, tries to highlight. Diabetic alert dogs, cardiac arrest dogs, bomb detection dogs, a lot of these dogs go through a lot of training. They have high stress environments, long days. So there’s a lot of dogs that need what we provide, which is the world’s highest energy dog food. So that’s kind of where it all started from. I would say still, though, that those sled dogs doing the Iditarod and the Yukon quest, I don’t know if there’s dogs working much harder than them during those race seasons.

Ramsey Russell: All right now let’s go back. You all been making dog food for 20 years. Now, tell me the origins, because this is a fantastic story. Tell me the origins of how you all got into the dog food business.

Creating a High-Energy Dog Food for Working Dogs

He went to work, we hired a veterinarian nutritionist named doctor Dale Hill at the time, and him and Lee and our in house lab team developed our 32-32, which is still to this day, the world’s highest energy dog food was 720 kcals per cup, 32% protein, 32% fat, and that’s how it all started. 

Brian Conoley: Yeah, we’re pretty lucky. We walk backwards blindly almost into a really key innovation aspect. So, Corey nutrition, which is our parent company, started by Lee Corey, 41 years ago, we started off as a commercial fish feed manufacturing plant. There was a lot of fish farmers on the east coast, and there was a lot of business to be had. So we used to make, and we still do, we dabble a little bit, but we used to make the best commercial fish food on the market. These farmers that wanted to grow bait fish as quickly and as healthy and as big as possible to then catch, their live catch fish, or if it was like a salmon farmer or something like that, they wanted to raise the best quality fish for consumption, they needed the best food. Lee, he’s a microbiologist, that’s where his degree comes from. He decided that what he was going to build was a vacuum infusion fish food plant and that vacuum infusion is really the key. So we did really well and for the first 10, 15 years of the business, we got all the farmers on the east coast, we got all their contracts, and the plant was just humming along, and it was great, and we knew all the people in town that had fish, and we had all the contracts. Then one day, a gentleman comes in and he’s buying a metric ton of fish food. We knew that he didn’t have fish and Lee just can’t help himself. He’s too curious. He went up to the guy and he said, hey, you’re buying a metric ton of fish food. Thank you very much. We’ll sell it to you, no problem, but we know you don’t have any fish to feed, so why are you buying this ungodly amount of fish food? The guy said, I got sled dogs, and this stuff is packed with protein, it’s packed with fat. It’s so much lighter and more and less expensive than the meat that I usually have to feed them or the dry dog food or the wet dog food that I usually feed them. So I just use it as part of their diet, and at this point in time, the fish industry had changed a little bit, where a lot of those small farms had got bought up by larger companies, and the contracts started to dwindle, and the mill wasn’t running as much. Lee said, I can make you dog food that just will rock these guys’ world and provide everything that this fish is doing, but more. We can get the carbohydrates and the minerals and everything else your dog needs. So all you need to feed these sled dogs would be our food, and that was it. He went to work, we hired a veterinarian nutritionist named doctor Dale Hill at the time, and him and Lee and our in house lab team developed our 32-32, which is still to this day, the world’s highest energy dog food was 720 kcals per cup, 32% protein, 32% fat, and that’s how it all started. A problem was identified that Lee knew he could fix and solve. Ever since then, he’s tried to make everything that Inukshuk stands for is to be solution oriented. We want to problem solved for people, and that’s why now we have 3 energy levels and 5 formulas. We’re a very well kept secret, but we don’t want to be forever. So we’re starting to light fires all over the place, and it’s really catching on, particularly in the hunting world, because there are a lot of dogs out there that are working their guts out, and they might have had a good food in the past, but a lot of people have been struggling to find a consistent, high performing dog food that meets the needs of these athletes, these athletic dogs. So we’re very happy to now play in this space and really make some big differences in some people’s lives.

Ramsey Russell: You bring up a very good point. Maybe to the outsider looking in these black Labs, these dogs that we use, these labradors, these chessies, these animals in the duck hunting world, maybe they look like pets, maybe they are our best friends, maybe they sleep on the couch and hog the covers on our beds like Char does when we travel. At the end of the day, they are, first and foremost, highly trained athletes that have enormous expectations on them. When I watch a Retriever run out, 70, 80 yards and pick up a 10, 11-pound goose and run with all their power back to the blind. 11, 12-pounds is one thing. 11, 12-pounds is a function of a 50-pound dog, and it is running back like a fireman dragging hose in a house blaze and they’re doing it over and over again. It is an enormous energy demand. I know that I’m speaking to everybody that owns a Retriever out there right now listening, they’re Olympians. They have been trained. They have got enormous expectations on them, and we’ve all been kind of brought up into hyper-marketed dog foods here in America, that it’s the best. Then we go out and we see we know it’s not. I’ll give you example, the last food I fed Char the first three years of her life, by day 40, 45 of a road trip like we’re on right now, making Retrieves every day and traveling every day. By this point of it, I was feeding her twice the recommended daily allowance and it was running right through her. She would lose, she would lose five or ten pounds within the first 40, 50 days and I could not keep the weight on it.

Brian Conoley: That’s a lot. That’s dramatic for a dog that size, right?

Ramsey Russell: She looked like an Auschwitz prisoner or something. She was almost skin and bone. She looked like a bird dog that hadn’t been fed, is what she looked like and I could not get the weight on her and Alan swapped over. So to keep her diet consistent, I swapped over. Now, she stays bulky, her coat gleams, and her muscle mass, there are times that the sun hits her just right and she looks like she’s on stage, one of those muscle builders flexing her muscles. She doesn’t lose weight, her weight stays consistent. Now, when we are doing these road trips, I think I feed her, on travel day or just off times, I feed her 3 cups a day. When we’re hunting, especially going to Canada hunting mornings and evenings or going out, I feed her twice a day. Maybe I’ll feed her a cup in the morning if I know she’s going to be in the water a lot, going to be swimming a lot, like we’re fixing to do over here for sea ducks. I may feed her a cup in the morning when I get back. I’ll feed her a cup after the hunt, midday, and I’ll feed her 2 cups. So now I’m feeding her about 25% more than normal, but still, it’s amazing, that energy reserve. That she has and she’s not losing weight and she’s holding her form and it’s just like she’s running high octane jet fuel. She’s get up and go from start to finish and I asked Alan one time, I said, Alan, what’s wrong with this dog? He said, what do you mean? I said, she’ll go pick up 70 geese and while we’re picking up decoys, she’s 200 yards away, out in the field hunting for more to do. She’s just a blur. Run across the field looking for more birds. She’s just full of energy and I cannot say she was like that two years ago when I was feeding her another major name brand pro food that’s out there on the American market. I can say for a fact she wasn’t like that.

Unlocking a Duck Dog’s True Potential

The way that we accomplish that is it’s not just by packing more calories and sucking more fat into the food, although that’s a large part of it, and we probably do want to spend some time talking about that, but it’s also the digestibility. 

Brian Conoley: Yep. It’s potential that we’re trying to unlock, it’s true potential. So, a lot of people, when they’re entering into a conversation considering switching with us, they’ll be like, is this going to be, too high drive for my dog? Are they going to be hyper on it? It’s not like relying on this food, caffeine or anything. What we’re doing is we’re providing them all the ingredients and the nutrition and the vital vitamins that these dogs need to be their best versions of themselves. The way that we accomplish that is it’s not just by packing more calories and sucking more fat into the food, although that’s a large part of it, and we probably do want to spend some time talking about that, but it’s also the digestibility. Where we are so fortunate, and this will not change. We have one mill. It’s family owned. We control everything coming in, we control everything going out, and what we’re able to do is we’re actually able to grind all of our ingredients in house. That fine grind, having everything go down to a flour like consistency, but the same consistency for your carbs and for your protein meals and everything else that’s going in. If those are all super fine in the same consistency, when it hits that dog stomach and it’s loaded up with that fat and those stomach acids start to get to work, that food is going to break down faster, it’s going to be absorbed more efficiently, it’s going to create less waste, and it’s got everything that dog needs to kick up the engine and do their thing, in and out of the water, bring them back geese and ducks all day. So, hearing Char dog success story and all these other dogs, all these people, we sell direct, so we’re very fortunate. We get to talk to all our customers firsthand. There’s not a day goes by my office where I don’t pick up the phone and someone’s just saying, what in the holy hell are you doing to this food? How is my dog so different now? Luckily, it’s science based, and we can explain it and it’s not smoke and mirrors, which, unfortunately, the dog food world is full of it. It’s just a lot of stuff that makes a lot of sense.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about you all’s formulas. What are the Inukshuk formulas that are available direct to consumer?

What Do Protein and Fat Percentages Mean in Dog Food?

We have 3 energy levels. So our original three formulas are 26-16. And those numbers, the first number is protein percentage, and the last number is fat percentage. So 26% protein, 16% fat.

Brian Conoley: Yeah, so we have 5 formulas. We have 3 energy levels. So our original three formulas are 26-16. And those numbers, the first number is protein percentage, and the last number is fat percentage. So 26% protein, 16% fat. That’s an all life stage formula and that’s really good for your small breed dogs, your whelping mothers, your puppies, in general, those are the people who are using that. Most hunting dogs will graduate up to a 30-25, which is our second energy tier, 30% protein, 25% fat. So this is for your dog. They’re in their adult frame now, they can kick up their exercise regimen. They’re going to work harder, they’re going to work longer. They’re bigger now. They’ve got bigger muscles to maintain throughout the hunting season, so they need a little bit more. Most of your adult hunting dogs, whether it’s upland or waterfowl, will be on our 30-25 blends. And then we have our 32-32, and that’s the rocket fuel. So that’s for your extremely hard keepers in the hunting world. Oftentimes, pointers will be the ones that are on our 32-32 more than other breeds, just because, again, they have a high drive metabolism, they shake off weight in their sleep, so they need a little something more. But your sled dogs, your belgian Malinois police and protection dogs, that’s the fuel for them, because their energy demands are just so high that, we go to these police trade shows, and the most common story is I got to pump 7 cups of food into this dog, and I can still count its ribs from a kilometer away. I need something more. We can take that dog down to 3 cups, usually less than half, and have them put on weight and look more healthy. Just because the dog stomach is only so big, it can only handle so much at once. So you may pump 7 cups into it, but you’re not keeping 7 cups into it. So those are the 3 original energy levels. And then because the dog food world, you need to have some options, we have really great access to seafood here so we decided to come up with a marine line formula. There’s a couple ingredients that have bad reputations, whether they deserve them or not. We can talk about that a little later, but we wanted to remove barriers of entry and not compromise performance and give people different protein and different carb sets. So we’ve got our marine line formula, and we have a 26-16 marine that we call Marine 16, and we have a 30-25 blend marine that we call Marine 25. They’re same calorie per cup, same feeding regimen required, but different ingredient sets, either to address a specific issue that, a little bit more fish oil may help, or if your dog’s allergic to chicken or you don’t like the idea of corn in a dog’s diet, we’ve got an option for you that doesn’t have those ingredients, so your dog can still benefit from what we’re doing over here in Inukshuk HQ.

Ramsey Russell: If a little bit is good, more is better. That’s always been my motto. More is better. When I started feeding Char 30-25, the results were instantaneous. I saw the energy level. I saw her keeping her weight. There are stretches of time that she is retrieving an enormous amount of birds in a short amount of period, just over and over and over. I said to myself, golly, man, they got this sled dog formula, and she’s a small dog. She’s 48 pounds, soaking wet. I’m going to feed her this sled dog for her, man. 30-25 is good. This 32-32 is going to be like rocket fuel. It was just too hot for her. It was way too hot. Even when I backed off a little bit, it was extremely hot. Now, look, she got thick real quick, buddy. She looked amazing, but it was just a little too hot. So, really and truly, in this context, more is not necessarily better, is it?

Brian Conoley: We’re less is more, kind of company over here. There’s more is more and, in some situations that’s true, but for us, less is more. There’re a few big reasons, if you’ve got a dog that’s working hard all day and you need to start the engine up in the morning, a big meal, you have to wait quite a while before you can avoid bloat and other digestional problems if they’re going to get going and exercising. So, a small easily digestible meal to provide them with what they need to get through that first work session. Less is more. Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but dog food and shipping stuff around the world these days, prices are going up. So, if your bag of dog food can now last 20% or 30% longer and you’re paying less per bag and you’re getting better results, less is truly more. It’s more money in your pocket. It’s less food in your dog, but more performance. Some dogs, in Char’s case, when a meal gets too small, like on 32-32, Labs like eating. So, there’s certain scenarios where you might want to feed a tear down or feed a lower protein, lower fat so that their meal is bigger and that’s okay. Theres a section to every rule, but we truly feel that less is more, and you can get more performance, and you can save more money, and your dogs digestive system is going to have an easier time. Then the big thing, if youve got a string of 20 or 30 dogs and theyre pumping out a lot of waste out the back door, and you can cut down on that waste, because of our digestibility rates. We’ve got an average digestibility rate of about 87%, which means 87% of what you put in the dog stays in the dog, which means 13% is coming out the back door. If you can make that number smaller and make cleanup time and your kennel time less, less is really more in that case, because ain’t nobody loved picking up after their dog.

Ramsey Russell: You talk about digestibility, and you talk about the waste. I’ll say this, that she hits the ground in the morning, in the spread. Hopefully, she goes outside of where we’re setting up decoy to do her business, but oftentimes, she does not. She’s ready to go. I can tell you this that her pile out in the field, relative to the amount of food I’m feeding her, her bowl full of food, relative to that little pile, she’s retaining a lot of what I’m feeding her. There’s very, very little output. I think you told me a number one time, 85 and 90% retention. I would say that her pile is about 15% of what that bowl represents, if that makes sense. It’s unbelievable.

Brian Conoley: Yep. That’s Online with our about 87% digestibility. That makes perfect sense. Typically, they’re firmer, and they’re easier to pick up. Dogs get diarrhea. It’s going to happen. People always point to the food first, thinking that, your food is causing diarrhea and with the Inukshuk, if you just switch your dog over to it, say you listen to this episode, you go buy a bag from somewhere, and you find that your dog’s got loose stools, you’re probably feeding too much because you’re used to feeding more and having to feed more.

Ramsey Russell: There can be other factors, too. You’re exactly right. If I just happen to glance through the head beam and see that she’s a little loose, I probably overfed her. I probably gave her that cup too much the night before. Like I said, I’ll add a little bit more and I’ll back down just a little bit. At the same time, you start talking about swapping dog food for now. Anybody listening that goes out and buys a bag of this food to try, and I’m telling you all, if you love your dog, go buy a bag of this food and try it this season, you will not go back to whatever you’re feeding your dog right now. But when you swap a dog food on a dog like that, you gotta expect a little settle time. Whatever their internal biome is used to right now, good or bad, it’s going to take just a little change over. So go into it easy. What I would recommend, and when I swapped Char over, I did do this. I had some of the other dog food, and I was feeding her kind of half and half until the other dog food was gone. Then I stepped it up. You’ve got to acclimate a dog when you change their diet. They’re not like us. They don’t go from eating barbecue rib to barbecue chicken to fried fish to onion rings to cheeseburgers. Dogs aren’t like that. They eat cheeseburgers their whole life. If you all of a sudden throw something else on the plate, you got to expect it’s going to upset their stomach just a little bit. That’s normal. You dialed it on that. That’s the one thing I look at is if her stool is loose, she’s probably being fed too much. But now, then again, a lot of travel, any stress is what I’m trying to say. You may have a dog that is so gung-ho and excited to be out there hunting that it’s got a nervous stomach. I’ve seen people put so much pressure on their dog. That dog is stressed, man. There’s a lot of reasons besides food that could be upsetting their stomach a little bit. We need to be cognizant of what those factors are when we’re dealing with our beloved Char dogs, right?

Brian Conoley: Absolutely. Stress has an effect on their bodies the same way it has on our bodies. And these dogs will pick up on your stress, too. They’re empaths, they have really good sense of what the climate in the room or in the truck or in the field is, and they’ll act accordingly to that. So stress can do it. A dog’s digestive system too, because most dogs just eat their dog food. They get that one type of food their whole life or for a long stretch of time. Their system isn’t used to breaking down a bunch of different things. Now, our formulas have more than one animal-based protein source in every formula, because it is good to have multiple protein and fat sources so that the dog’s system can pull what it needs for certain times, whether it’s a high-octane activity or an endurance activity or just a regular day on the couch. So multiple proteins are good, but because dogs don’t have as varied meals or appetites that we do or offerings that we do, that their digestive system will actually, if it gets something new in there and it doesn’t really know how to handle it, one of the first things the digestive system will do is its going to send more water and moisture into the digestion process. Salmon is a big one. Its an expensive protein, so its not in a lot of dog foods. So when dogs switch over to our marine formula, where salmon is one of the main protein sources, a lot of dogs for that adjustment period, they’re going to have loose stools for a week or two because their body is getting used to it. It’s sending extra moisture that it thinks it needs to break this protein down until it kind of learns how to deal with that, it’s going to keep doing that. Typically, it goes away after a week or two, once they’re fully on the food. Then again, if you have a diarrhea issue, it’s probably not because of the food. It’s probably because of environment stress. Maybe they’re eating what I call deer popcorn out in the woods, there could be a lot of factors. It’s not something to worry about, it’s just something to monitor and do everything you can in your control to try to ebb it. I give my dog a frozen ice cubes worth of pumpkin every meal because he runs hot. He’s got nervous guts all the time. He’s shaking. He needs a little bit more fiber. We recognize that he’s got a loose stool. I’m not going to worry about it, but I am going to make sure that he doesn’t have 5,6,7 in a row, and if he does, there’s probably an x factor. That’s not the food going on that I need to figure out.

Dog Food Must-Have Ingredients & What to Avoid

Everything in our ingredient decks are there to serve a purpose, and they have value, and they’re calibrated to the right amount that’s going to be perfect for that dog in that exercise amount that that dog is going to need. 

Ramsey Russell: Amen. I’m going to shift gears and we’re talking about a lot of ingredients. We’re talking about a lot of protein and fat sources going into it and as somebody that goes into, hey, I’m often wrong, never in doubt, try to do the best I can as a parent for my dog. I go into a big box store, I look at the back of a dog food bag, the first thing I go to is the ingredients. I’ve been taught to know that the first ingredient I want is not corn, it’s something else. A lot of the commercial dog foods that you see at these big box American stores, number one ingredient is some kind of corn or some kind of filler, and then it might be some kind of chicken meal or something else, going along with it, but they can all brag on protein or this kind of output or that kind of output. So many of the commercial foods we see now, and it’s been my experience that when I feed any of my dogs something that’s got those ingredients listed at the primary on the bag, it runs right through them. Brian, also, I have fed my dog some of these popular brands out here now that don’t have corn as the primary ingredient, that when I feed it, it’s running right through them. It does not have the digestibility that you’re saying Inukshuk has. Alan said that Inukshuk doesn’t have a lot of corn and wheat and some of these different ingredients. Was he right about that? I’m trying to get into the composition of what makes Inukshuk so good. I’m starting off with this corn thing. What was Alan saying about the amount of corn and filler you all have got, and how does that reconcile with what you all really put in it?

Brian Conoley: So he’s right in one regard where we don’t use fillers. Everything in our ingredient decks are there to serve a purpose, and they have value, and they’re calibrated to the right amount that’s going to be perfect for that dog in that exercise amount that that dog is going to need. They’re very calibrated. They’re precious to us. He’s wrong on the account that we actually do use wheat and we do use corn. Now, corn has the worst reputation in the dog food world because corn can vary in its use and it can vary in its quality. We use whole grain corn that we grind in-house as a carbohydrate, as a sugar, something to get the engine going and it’s further down our ingredient deck. It’s probably 4,5 or 6 ingredients or something like that, and that’s where you want it. So protein is expensive, whether it’s chicken or salmon or herring or whatever, proteins are going to be your most expensive ingredient in a dog food. So if you’re a big dog food company and you’re trying to, make a buck and save a buck, what you’re going to do, instead of putting a lot of protein in the front, you’re going to put as much as you need to in there from an animal source. But then you’re going to fortify it with like a corn derivative, essentially a corn syrup. Now, corn syrup is just sugar. But it’s got a protein value in it and it’s cheap compared to chicken or compared to whatever that protein source is. So a lot of companies do to cut a corner, is they’ll say, we’ll use corn for the protein and the chicken and then, it’s a derivative of corn and it’s not good. In that scenario, we totally agree. That’s crappy corn. When you take a whole grain and then you grind it, you’re using everything that that grain has. It’s the difference between enriched wheat flour and whole grain wheat flour when you’re buying bread. Whole grains have all the nutritional value that that grain contains. Enriched wheat flour has been stripped of all that and then given a little bit back, which is why they say enriched, again, a very misleading term and it’s a hollow grain. It doesn’t have much nutritional value. Same thing applies to corn when you’re using it wrong. We have all of our grains ground in house. So our wheat shorts, they’re not sweepings that have been already processed off some factory floor, which some people think. It’s an actual product that we’re buying in a whole form and grinding in house, so that all the nutritional value of that ingredient is going to be in our food. Same with our corn, same with our beet pulp, things like that. So how you use the ingredient and where you use the ingredient is very important. Corn is a very easily digestible, bioavailable, glycemic, indexed, rated carbohydrate for dogs. If you use it the way we do, dogs will have no problem with it.

Ramsey Russell: We’re all stuck on the protein and fat train. We all know protein is good for maintaining muscle mass, but carbohydrates are part of a balanced diet.

Brian Conoley: They are. Basically, our formulas are 3 things. They’re proteins, they’re fats, and they’re carbohydrates. That makes up almost all of it, and they all serve their own purpose. The base unit of a carbohydrate is glucose. It’s a readily accessible form of energy. Dogs are lucky. They can use their fat stores in these sugar stores to get their engine running, and off they go, humans, carboload because we use those differently. We don’t use our fat stores until we burn through all of our carbohydrates. Dogs are not like that. They’re different. So these carbohydrates, when used in the right place, in the ingredient deck, into the right amount, and from a good source, they’re excellent sources of energy. Dogs will convert that into energy, no problem. It’s not going to hang around in the system or anything like that. They’re going to burn that off, especially a working dog. Now, corn has a bad reputation, and we don’t always have the opportunity to have this conversation. So we made a couple of great formulas that don’t use corn, and we haven’t substituted them with other ingredients that don’t have a track record or anything like that either. We’re using whole grain oats, we’re using barley. We’re using other good grain sources that have these sugars in them because they are necessary for performance animals to get that engine going and going fast the way that you want your dog run out of that blind at its full capacity. Corn is helping them do that in our formulas. In a crappy dog food, it’s not helping them. It’s doing the opposite of that. Protein sources, kind of the same thing. People think that the word meal, chicken meal, or fish meal means that you have a subpar protein source. That’s not the case. Meal is just the end result of processing that protein so you can get it into a dry dog food. If you break open any kibble, you’re not going to find a chunk of chicken in it. You’re going to find just that whole matter, that cooked, extruded brown kibble throughout the whole dog food. That meal has been incorporated into that. Where you do come into different qualities is if you’re using a byproduct meal or just a lower quality animal protein source. So chicken byproduct, not very good. Inexpensive. It’s going to show up in inexpensive dog foods. Chicken meal, herring meal, salmon meal, those are excellent protein sources. All it means is that they’ve been processed, removed of the moisture, so they’re ready to go into that dry dog food.

Ramsey Russell: Now we’re up here to where I wanted to be. What are Inukshuk’s protein and fat sources and how do they compare to other popular brands of performance dog foods sold at big box stores?

Fatty Acids: Key to Joint, Skin, and Cognitive Health in Dogs

There’s saturated fats, there’s unsaturated fats, and there’s polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are your omegas. So you need a good balance of omega-3 and 6 in dog food, and they need to be balanced just.

Brian Conoley: So, we have a star ingredient, and it’s the Atlantic herring. This is a really oily fish, and it has good fats. So there’s a bunch of different types of fats. There’s saturated fats, there’s unsaturated fats, and there’s polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are your omegas. So you need a good balance of omega-3 and 6 in dog food, and they need to be balanced just. So our Atlantic herring is in all of our formulas because it’s a great omega-3 source. It’s a great source of fatty acids and fatty acids have so many benefits, joint health, skin health, coat health, olfactory performance, cognitive conditioning. They’re really beneficial. The thing about fish fats and fish oils, though, is that they’re volatile. They don’t last as long on a shelf as other fat sources. So most companies, when they’re getting their fats on there, they’re spraying chicken fat after the food has been extruded onto the food to have it be absorbed into the kibble. It can only absorb so much usually about 20%, 30% or something like that. So that’s why a lot of other kibbles are oily to the touch, where you notice ours is dry and the bottom of a bag can be kind of an oily mess sometimes it’s because those fats. Chicken fat is okay. We use chicken fat, but it’s nowhere near as good as a fish oil. So we use both. That way we get a blend of omega-3 and 6, but instead of spraying it onto that food, we pull that fat into the kibble, replacing all those little air pockets that are in most kibbles with these fats and because now it’s not exposed to air, it’s not as volatile, it’s going to last longer. We can use more of it, and we can put it in all of our formulas. So our herring is really our star ingredient. It’s not really used in the human food market. So we have tons of access to it here in the Bay of Fundy. It’s all live caught. It’s awesome. Then for our other original formulas chicken’s great. People think that their dogs are allergic to chicken because their dog is having a reaction to a pretty crappy dog food, most likely. But if you turn the back of the bag around and you look at the first ingredient or second ingredient, if it’s chicken or corn, people think, well, this is the problem. Your dog is sensitive to chicken, move on. If you use a good chicken source the way we do, and before we had marine formulas, we used to tell people, you think your dog’s allergic to chicken. Here, try this. All the problems go away, but they’re eating chicken still because they’re eating quality chicken. But again, we’ve got access to such great seafood here that we made a marine formula anyways. Just the more the merrier in that aspect. Options are how you can kind of sometimes succeed in a flooded market. Just the right amount. Not too many options, but not too few. So our original 3 formulas, chicken and herring, great balance of omega-3 and omega-6. Awesome formulas. If you think your dog’s allergic to chicken, I promise you, they most likely are not. They’re very rare. Dogs can eat a lot of stuff and have no problems. Chicken is certainly one of them. I’ve seen my dog eat a lot worse and have no problems.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen dogs eat roadkill or something very similar to it, not get sick a bit. So I don’t think chicken’s a problem.

Brian Conoley: Exactly. Chicken’s not a problem. Bad food’s a problem. Absolutely and chicken could be in bad food because, again, chicken varies. A roasted chicken out of your oven and a chicken mcNugget. Are those the same thing? Absolutely not.

Ramsey Russell: Right, Good point.

Brian Conoley: And then our marine formula, because, again, we want multiple protein sources, because it’s all about blending and giving that dog’s digestive system and inner workings options. We like to use multiple protein sources. So in our marine formulas, we use a herring white fish, which are both live caught from the Bay of Fundy and then we use salmon, which is sustainably farmed in ocean pens here in the Maritimes. There’s no live caught Atlantic salmon anymore, you have to get frozen salmon from the Pacific. It’s a different species. It’s not as good as Atlantic salmon. So we’re really proud of the farmers that we work with for our salmon source as well. We have an article out on our website, and if people are curious, I encourage them to hop on and read it because it really is our star ingredient and because of where we’re located and how we do things, we’re not worried about people saying,  Oh, Brand X is going to go use herring now, stop talking about it. No, they’re not. They’re all the way over there. They’ve got such a massive supply chain. They can’t mess with that. They’re not going to touch it. Don’t tell them about vacuum infusion. Everyone’s going to start vacuum infusing. Well, most of our competition don’t even own their mills. They’re getting their product made in 10, 12 mills, spread across the country, continent, whatever. They can’t retrofit these facilities. They can’t start from scratch the way we were kind of able to, like I said before, and kind of walk backwards into it. So we’ve got nothing to hide. We’ve only got some stuff to brag and educate people about, to be honest with you. Because it’s these differences in ingredients and control that make Inukshuk what it is. Anyone who knows a lot about dog food and has had different dog food in their hand, if I put dog food in a stranger’s hand at a cop show or at a hunting show, wherever I might be, and they know dog food the second I put it in their hand and they’re unfamiliar with the product. They go, oh, this is different. Then some guys will pop it in their mouth. Other guys will break it apart right away because they’re curious. They want to know why it’s different and then off we go and we start chatting, and we’ve got a lot of stuff to chat about.

What is Vacuum Infused Dog Food?

We remove all the air oxygen from that chamber, and it pulls the actual fats for the formula into the air pockets of the kibble. 

Ramsey Russell: You talk about this vacuum infusion process, and I kind of sort of get my mind wrapped around of what you all are doing to pull those oils deep into that little food nugget. When I get my Inukshuk, delivered to the house, it is in this, vacuum sealed brick of dog food. That is not a drop of air, it seems like, inside that bag. That’s what my mind keeps going back to when you talk. I don’t see any other dog foods that are like this, that are air sealed. It seems like, hermetically air sealed. When I get my dog food to ensure freshness and everything else, and I don’t see any other dog food on the market like this. Am I getting confused? Is that the same thing we’re talking about or just something different?

Brian Conoley: You’re getting a little confused, but I don’t blame you, because vacuum comes into play with both. So the vacuum infusion process that I was just speaking about, that’s a process where we put the food after it’s been cooked into a big chamber. We remove all the air oxygen from that chamber, and it pulls the actual fats for the formula into the air pockets of the kibble. So that’s vacuum infusion. That’s a production method. What you’re talking about is vacuum sealing. So when the product is now done being vacuum infused and it’s dried and it’s cooled and it’s ready to go into a bag, there’s a couple different ways you can package things. Air is what’s going to make your food go spoil quicker. So we want to take air out of the equation as much as possible. One way to do that is to vacuum seal things. So you put the food in a bag, you seal the bag up. There’s obviously some air in the bag still because that’s what air does. It just goes everywhere. So what you can do if you’re vacuum sealing things is you can vacuum out. You can suck the air out of that bag. Now, that bag’s got no oxygen in it. That’s great. The problem is when you open that bag of food, that seal is going to be broken. Then when you reclose that, that bag of food up, there’s going to be air trapped in there and now that air can’t get out because not everyone’s going to be vacuuming air out of their bag every time, they close it after every meal. So, what we’ve done, instead of vacuum sealing, which gets you the same result. You’re right our bags look dimpled. They look like all that air has been sucked out of them. But what’s actually going on is we’ve developed a one way air valve. That air valve on the bag, what it’s doing from the second that bag is sealed up is it starts expelling air. So any air in the bag goes out that valve, and no air can come back in, and that valve can still work when the bag of food is open. So basically, if you get a bag of Inukshuk and it’s all dimpled and it’s sealed up tight as a drum, that’s probably because it was on the bottom of a pallet, or maybe it’s a week or two older than some of the other food on the market, and it’s had more time to expel that oxygen out and get a really nice, tight seal on it. Sometimes you’ll get a fresh bag. Again, we sell direct, so our food usually reaches the consumer four to six weeks old, right, as opposed to six months old, with some other formulas, other brands. So sometimes our bags will be a little bit puffy and you can tell that there’s air in there because it’s super fresh. That valve just hasn’t had the opportunity to kick that air out yet, or it was on the top of a pallet. So there was no pressure, expediating that process and pushing that air out at a quicker rate. That bag of food is fine, it’s super fresh, it’s sealed, it’s going to kick that air out. Go ahead and use it. The nice thing is, when you cut your bag and you know where that valve is, you can roll that bag up, put a clip on it, and that valve is going to go right back to work and it’s going to keep pushing the oxygen out of the bag. So our food lasts 24 months or 18 months, depending on the formula, because we’re not giving oxygen the chance to ruin the kibble. We’ve put all the fat inside the food, so oxygen’s not getting to it that way, and we’re kicking the air out of the bag when we reclose it because of our valve. That bag is our first line of defense for quality. If the food gets to you and it’s in shambles or it’s been exposed to air or whatever, that’s no good. So we got to do everything we can to prevent that. Shipping pallets of dog food across the continent, it comes with its challenges. Pallets tip over, things get wrecked and broken, and you might get a bag with a little tear in it. The food’s most likely fine, but we’re here to fix all these problems. We’re a phone call away. We’re an email away. We want to take care of these problems as they come up. We’re really proud of our bags and our packaging, and they’re actually something that are constantly evolving. We just started putting nylon coating on all our bags 6 months ago because it costs more, but the bags tip over a lot less in transit, which means it’s getting to you better. We’ve thickened the gauge of our pallet wrapping, and we’ve got cardboard walls on our pallets now. We’re doing everything we can to make sure that food gets to your dogs in the best possible condition as freshly as possible.

Ramsey Russell: One thing I noticed the first time I opened a bag of Inukshuk was these dense, little, dark-brown, oily pellets. It’s almost like when I stuck my hand in the bag, it was oily. Alan talked also about how when you add water and this, when I’m traveling every single meal away from home, when I feed Char, I add water. I do that not because your food needs it. I do it because it’s hard-

Brian Conoley: Char needs water.

Ramsey Russell: It’s hard to keep a dog hydrated when you’re traveling. If we stop for a pit stop and I put out a bowl of water, she may drink it, but she’s not interested. She’s not going to drink what she needs. She wants to go out and run and play and do her thing, fetch bumpers, whatever. So, every meal, I fill up her bowl of water, and your food sinks to the bottom and stays to the bottom and doesn’t move. It’s like Alan said, if I make it on the tailgate of the truck and go off and do something and come back 15, 20, 30 minutes later, it looks exactly like I left it when I poured my water on as compared to other name brand over marketed dog foods out there, they turn to mush. They get soft. I don’t know what, it’s just mushy. It floats to the top and looks terrible. Why is that, Brian?

Brian Conoley: The bulk density of the other foods is a lot lower. So what I mean by bulk density is you got to cut a kibble and say it’s like the size of a corn puff or whatever, you know. We all know Sugary cereals are full of air. Other dog foods are full of air as well. It makes a bigger kibble, which means your bag gets filled up faster. Um, they’re not vacuum infusing, so they got no way to, to fill in those little air gaps. So when you put most other kibbles in water, it is going to go into those pores, it’s going to soften that food up. It’s going to turn to mush because water is given the ability to do that. When you put Inukshuk in there, and if you ever break a piece of Inukshuk and look at the cross section, it’s dense right through there. There is no air, it’s all fat so it sinks. The water is not penetrating through the kibble to soften it up because it can. It’s got nowhere to go. Water is like anything. It’s only going to go somewhere if it can. If it can’t, it doesn’t. We say on the back of our bags, feed Inukshuk with lots of fresh water on hand. Don’t float in Inukshuk and that’s just generally, because if you picture a dog eating food and water together, and they’re lapping it up, they’re probably not chewing as much as they could be. Which means the food is going into their body without being chewed. So the first process is not being done. It’s also got a bunch of water in there too, so they may feel more full, quicker the food’s not chewed. Now the body has water and food to work with at the same time, and it’s not the optimal situation for digestion. That being said, some things supersede that. In this case Char needs water when she’s on the road and if the only way she’s going to drink water is if she’s drinking it with her food, that’s more important than the food and water being mixed together. So, for hunting people, if that’s the way that you can get water into your dog, water is essential for the performance, that nose needs to be wet, they’re going to smell better, they’re going to work better if they’re hydrated, obviously. So a lot of hunters do that. They float in Inukshuk, but they realize that it doesn’t act the same way in water the other dog foods do, because it is different and if that’s what you got to do to get water in your dog, well, that’s more important than creating the optimal situation for digestion. Luckily, you’re feeding Inukshuk, which means you’re already doing everything you can for optimal digestion, because our food is super digestible. Actually, one of our other kind of cornerstones of our technology is that fine grind technology. The way that we’re able to take all the ingredients in house, run them through our hammer mill, and get them all down to that flour-powdery consistency. That is really what makes Inukshuk, even if it’s in a stomach full of water, way easier for dogs to digest than any other dry dog food on the market. You’re winning one way; you’re winning the other. You just got to figure out what the priorities are for your dog and, hydration is obviously a very big priority.

Ramsey Russell: Alan made a big point, talking about the coat of a dog being an indicator of the quality of the food. For many years, with all the other retrievers, I’ve had, as I fed the other best available foods, the foods that I thought were best, the ones that everybody are feeding, the ones that trainers feed, the ones that are blowing it out at all the big box stores and everything else. It was still suggested by my vet to me that I supplement that food, that I’m already paying an enormous amount for, with fish oil or DEAH, some kind of fish oil type pill or a substitute for fish oil, just to give her an added amount of those omega fatty acids. Since I have started feeding Inukshuk for the past two seasons, Char’s coat gleams like freshly blew gunmetal. She looks like a platinum Runway model when the sun hits that coat. All I’m doing is feeding her the food. I’m no longer adding any oil supplements to her diet and that’s all got to go back to the source and to the quality and to the vacuum infusion of you all’s process. Am I right? Is that what’s going on here?

Natural Ingredients vs. Additives: Inukshuk’s Holistic Approach

All those functions, that fish oil additive, that fortiflora for digestion, all those things that you’re adding to dog foods to accomplish, we are accomplishing through our ingredient deck and the natural ingredients, so we don’t need to add those things.

Brian Conoley: Yeah. You’re absolutely right. So, DHA, EPA, linolenic acids, they’re fatty acids, they’re Omegas. So, because a lot of dog food companies are not using those in their ingredient deck through a protein source the way we are, the herring oil and the herring meal providing most of that, they have to get it from another source. So, some people will call us up and they’ll be like, hey, I noticed that your dog food doesn’t have glucosamine, it doesn’t have chondroitin, and it doesn’t have fortiflora and all these other things that companies are adding to dog food. We say, yes, you’re absolutely right, because we don’t need to add it. All those functions, that fish oil additive, that fortiflora for digestion, all those things that you’re adding to dog foods to accomplish, we are accomplishing through our ingredient deck and the natural ingredients, so we don’t need to add those things. I have a 12-year-old retired sled dog named Ace. He’s a German short hair Pointer. His coat used to be pretty dry and brittle. When I adopted him, he was coming from a raw meat mixed with another kibble brand, half and half was his diet. And so when we first got him, before I found Inukshuk, I was adding fish oil, salmon oil I bought from the vet for, I don’t know, it was like $30 for 10oz or something. It was expensive, sticky and stinky, and I hated it. I had to wash the bowl after every use but, his coat did turn around and it started to become nice and soft, so we kept going. Then when I got on Inukshuk a couple years before I started working here, he’s been on Inukshuk for about 6 years now. I noticed that I cut it out because the person selling me Inukshuk said, listen, get a baseline with just the dog food, and if you need to, keep adding fish oil on top of that, then do so. So I cut it out. Just started feeding him the Inukshuk, and it’s like he was taking a bath and conditioner every day. It only took a week or two for it to turn around. It got soft. He didn’t shed as much, it was shiny, he looked so good. He still does, he’s 12, he’s an 80-pound dog, and he’s still cut. He looks great and when people who meet him for the first time, they come up and they rub his neck. They go, wow, he’s soft for a pointer and it’s because of those fish oils, those omegas that we have in our ingredient deck. We don’t need to add glucose, amino, chondroitin to help with joints and things like that our ingredient deck is doing that. Oftentimes people thank us for having to remove supplementation from their feeding process. We do consider Inukshuk to be a balanced meal. I run the social media for the company, and it’s funny, people will tag us in their meals that they’re feeding their dogs, and it’ll be like chicken skin and fish skin and an egg and yogurt and, like, 17 other ingredients along with Inukshuk and I’ll give it a heart, but I won’t share it because I don’t want to encourage that behavior. It’s like, my God, people how much time do you have? God bless you. I’m sure their dogs love that meal, but is it necessary to get the results that they’re aspiring towards?

Ramsey Russell: You talk about that. It reminds me of a buddy of mine, his Lab, and it’s a great dog rides on the front seat of his truck, and when he goes through McDonald’s, he buys two quarter pounders, one for him and one for the dog. Okay, so people are going to feed their dog what they’re going to feed their dogs. I think that’s hilarious.

Brian Conoley: Absolutely. Whatever makes you happy, whatever makes your dog happy. We’re never going to discourage people from doing what works for them because what works for you is working for you. But we’re going to give you honest answers if you ask us, so when people say, do I need to keep doing that? I’ll go, probably not. Sometimes they won’t and sometimes they will and all the power to them. There is such thing as too much of a good thing, and you can actually get a yeast build up from too much oils and things like that in a diet that we’ve seen occasionally. But those are typically dogs with, like, outlying skin issues and sensitivities. Dogs are individuals, so sometimes individual problems will require a little bit of extra here and there. Ace does require a little bit of extra fiber, and that’s fine. We realize it’s not going to be 100% perfect for everyone. You can’t bat 100 no matter who you are. You’re going to swing a couple times and not hit the ball. Knowing why we recommend this and knowing why we suggest what we suggest and being transparent about that is really important to us because the dog food world is confusing. It’s smoking mirrors, it’s a lot of bs, it’s a hard one to navigate.

Ramsey Russell: You are what you eat. We’ve talked so much about Inukshuk and the quality ingredients and the performance and everything else. The last thing I remember Alan talking about was ear infections. You are what you eat, but now I’ll say this, that for the first few years of Char’s life, she got a lot of ear infections. For the last two seasons since feeding Inukshuk, she does not get ear infections. I rinse her ears out every now and again. We’re in the water a lot. I will rinse her ears, but I don’t think it’s just the ear rinse, man. I really think it may have something to do with whatever is going in Inukshuk or the ingredients. This dog was very prone, it seemed like, to ear infections and since the Inukshuk has fed into it. We don’t get the ear infections we used to and I don’t, that’s weird.

Brian Conoley: You’re not creating the environment for those things to take hold. A healthy dog with a digestive system and an immune system that’s functioning, as well as it can with people who are caring for it, by rinsing the ears and recognizing they’re going in and out of the water. A healthy diet goes a long way. People who eat really healthy don’t get sick as often as people who eat like trash.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Brian Conoley: Whether it’s an ear infection, a cold, or whatever. Your immune system system, it’s all one big system, it’s all connected. So if you’re giving the dog proper nutrition, a lot of common problems, whether it’s skin irritation, ear infections, itchy paws, a lot of that stuff will go away. People like to point to one ingredient or one specific thing that’s making that difference because people want to know, they want closure. Unfortunately, it’s not, as always, cut and dry as that. it’s a combination of variables coming into play, but really good nutrition and quality food will give you such a leg up in preventing a lot of those things from happening. Dogs, humans, whomever.

Ramsey Russell: Yep. You all are sold direct to consumer. Listeners are not going to go to the local pet smart or the local big box store or their local veterinarian or the local co-op and pick up Inukshuk. You all are sold direct to consumers. That’s a very interesting model. That’s probably why you’re so much a foreigner.

Brian Conoley: That’s part of the reason why we’re still a secret.

How to Get the Best Dog Food on the Market

I triple dog dare you to go to chewy.com and buy a sack of Inukshuk. Guarantee you you’re not going to call them back and ask for your money back. You’re going to love the food.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, probably is. How can people get in touch with you all, Brian?

Brian Conoley: Yeah, and just to correct you a little bit, we are sell wholesale direct. When it comes to, buying by the pallet, we’ll sell a pallet to anybody and the reason that we’re not in big box and we’re not in chain stores is because when you enter into agreements with big box stores, there’s an assumed level of volume that they say grants them control over a territory. So say I was in selling to the big box in your neck of the woods, and you wanted a pallet of dog food, well that big box would say, nope, they got to come through me to get it. Which means you’re going to be paying an arm and a leg for 65 bags of Inukshuk. We disrupted the market, we said no, we’re not going to go that route, because we know that there is enough people out there. There’s like 65 million dogs in the states, right? If we got 1% of the market share, we would be laughing all the way to the bank. There’s a lot of opportunity here. There’s a lot of people that need a palleted quality dog food sent right to their doorstep and that’s the reality. Most other dog food companies are focusing on more doors, more stores, more people, more single bag customers. We have a lot of single bag customers now. We’ll sell to the local and the independent shops. They can buy a pallet from us and resell it. Anybody who buys a pallet, if they want to, they can resell Inukshuk. It’s a wholesale product. It’s like coffee beans. If people want to resell it, great. We’ve got some resources and tools to help you do. So if you just need it to feed it, also great. It means you probably are going to be less work as a client and we love you for it, but we love everybody who wants to use it, but we are trying to get it into as many households as possible. Yes, we sell direct North America by the pallet to absolutely anybody who needs it, but if you don’t need a pallet, we want to encourage our trusted resellers to create their own client bases and sell for less than what we sell online in Canada. We’re also on chewy. So chewy is a really great way for people to try the food risk free, satisfaction guaranteed.

Ramsey Russell: chewy.com. You can buy by the-

Brian Conoley: Chewy doesn’t charge shipping, but they charge shipping. It’s not in the price, it’s in the price. They’re not saying $20 for shipping, but the bag of dog food is $90 or whatever. That’s because dog food’s heavy and expensive. There’s no way around it. It costs money to ship, so chewy is expensive, but if it doesn’t work out, they’ll just give you your money back. You don’t need to send the food back. So it’s a really easy, risk free way for people in the states to try it. Then what we encourage is hop on our website, look at our trusted reseller map, see if there’s somebody in your area that’s reselling it, reach out to them, then off you go. It’s going to be less expensive than chewy almost every single time. If there’s no one in your area, well, maybe you can talk to some friends and some neighbors and some people who have a few dogs, and you guys could get up to a pallet and just split the order, because the wholesale prices are extremely competitive. In the eastern part of the states, a bag of 30-25, when you buy it by the pallets, $38. People go this food can’t be good if it’s $38 a bag, well, no, you’re buying it right from us. There’s no distributor, there’s no retailer to pay, and you’re buying 65 bags, so you’re getting a great price. So, it’s the best dog food on the market at the best price, if you can work within the wholesale realm. If not, a reseller or Chewy is the way to go and I do apologize. Some people have a hard time wrapping their head around why we won’t just sell them a bag from Canada. We can’t just ship a bag of dog food across the border. The FDA has to inspect it. We need to do that en masse and into our warehouses, and there’s a whole process. Same reason I can’t send you a bag of samples into the states the way I can in Canada. But Chewy is a really good resource to at least get to try it risk free, and then hopefully, you can find a source from there. We got 555 resellers on the map now, and 2½ years ago, we had maybe 20. So, people are coming on board. There’s been a lot of progress, so hopefully they’ll be easily to get Inukshuk in your neighborhood, no matter where you are in just a little bit of time.

Ramsey Russell: The the trainers I know, like Alan are buying pallets of it. They will also resell it and then I actually know people like my Newfie buddies and a group down south that are just going into a Retriever club. They’re going together, buying the pallet and splitting it out among the members. There’s a million different ways. I am so deeply invested emotionally and financially into my Retriever’s well being, I’m willing to go that extra distance. You know what I’m saying? I’m tired of not just dog food, but the entire world of hyper marketing me, and just selling me snake oil for a lot more money, paid to the advertisement, paid to the distributors, and still I’m getting shit instead of something good.

Brian Conoley: It drives me crazy, man. Like, as a marketer, my algorithm, when I’m online, I get sold a lot of dog food because people think I’m really interested in dog food because of just how I interact online, right? So I see everybody else’s commercials, and the thing that drives me crazy is they’ll be like, now with FortiFlora, you’re not doing your dog justice if you’re not giving it FortiFlora. You’re only putting that in your dog food because your dog food lacks the ability for your dog to have a healthy gut with your ingredient deck. You’re only adding these things because you’re adding them at such small levels where you can make the claim on the back of the bag, but are they really making a difference? Well, not from the conversations I have day in, day out, people looking for other options. So it’s a tough one to navigate out there because a promise and acclaim and a golden shining beacon and a reason to buy it. If you just dig a little bit deeper, it’s actually an indicator that that food is lacking something inherently that it shouldn’t. Maybe it’s not the quality that you think it is.

Ramsey Russell: When you cut out the distribution and the big box type add on fees, that’s why you’re so cheap. There’s a lot of businesses, a lot of high quality products in America that, many of them are sponsoring us right now that have gone that direction. It’s offering value to the consumer by cutting out all the-

Brian Conoley: Well, it gives us more control too. I didn’t mean to cut you off there. I apologize. If we have a margin to work with that is bigger than if it was if I had to cut that margin onto a distributor and then also cut that margin into the retailer. That’s why all these other big brands are going up, because everyone needs a piece of the pie and no one’s willing for their piece to shrink. But because we have a really big margin and we’re growing in numbers of customers, we can chip away at that margin and keep our prices more static. We haven’t had a price increase since October 22 and we’re really proud of that. We’re not making as much per pallet as we were in October 22. We’ve suffered losses, but because of our product, because of our customer relation and the word of mouth, we’ve got more people coming on board, that makes up for that lack of margin and that’s the inherent difference between a shareholded company and a family run company. With control, we can control our margin and we can take the hit because we know that we’ve got something that will grow in volume because of the quality and because of the results and because of the performance. We don’t need to worry about making a buck more to make more money for everybody. That’s not the game that we’re playing, and we’re really proud of that. That’s never going to change once this mill is running at full capacity. We’re not building another mill or renting space out somewhere else. There will be a ceiling of how much Inukshuk is out in the world because we can only do so much in our family facility here. We got like 60 employees. We’re not tiny, it’s not like we’re using grandma’s oven. It’s a big operation, but it’s got a ceiling, and that ceiling will ensure quality and control.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Conoley: And that’s intuitive for business.

Ramsey Russell: How can we connect with Inukshuk? And where can we go to learn more about Inukshuk?

Brian Conoley: Yeah. Awesome. I appreciate the opportunity to teach you that. So inukshukpro.com is our website, and it’s a living, growing document. It’s got tons of information on it. We’re adding to it every day. So that’s inukshukpro.com. We’ve got a 1800 number. 1805-610072. If you’re not tired of my voice, you can ask for me directly, or anybody on the sales or marketing team will help you out. We got humans on the end of every phone. You might got to push a button or two to get to the human, but that’s just because we want you to talk to the right human. We’re on Facebook and Instagram. We’re very accessible there. I’m constantly answering questions and providing resources and feeding charts and hooking people up with resellers on the messenger threads and DM’s from Instagram. So we’re ready to talk there, and then my email is inukshukpro@corey.ca that goes right to me and, I’ll connect you with the right person. So that’s inukshukpro@corey.ca because Corey Nutrition Company is our parent company.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you very much, Brian. Folks, thank you all for listening, listening to this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere Podcast. You guys that listen to this believe like I do, that our dogs deserve the utmost best. They are high performance athletes. We put a tremendous amount of expectations on them. We want them to live their fullest potential in the brief amount of time that we get to hunt them, and we want them to do so injury free. I triple dog dare you to go to chewy.com and buy a sack of Inukshuk. Guarantee you you’re not going to call them back and ask for your money back. You’re going to love the food. You’re going to get in touch with Brian, and you all are going to become a part of one of the biggest professional dog food movements you had not yet heard of until this morning. Thank you all for listening.

Brian Conoley: Ramsey, you’re giving me goosebumps, man.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, man. We’re with the truth?

Brian Conoley: Thank you so much, buddy.

Ramsey Russell: You’re welcome.

Brian Conoley: Yeah, well, I appreciate that truly.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, thank you all for listening to the episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We will see you next time.