Why I Created My Own Dog Food

For Dr. Pol, caring for animals has always meant looking beyond the veterinary clinic, including what goes into their bowl. In this post, he shares how his focus on nutrition and whole-animal care ultimately led him to create his own brand of dog food. 

People ask me all the time, “Doc, after more than fifty years as a veterinarian, why did you decide to create your own dog food?”

This time, the answer isn’t straightforward.

I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I wanted to be in the dog food business.

I wanted to be a veterinarian because I wanted to help animals.

Everything else came from that.

After more than fifty years of practicing veterinary medicine, I’ve learned something very important.

Helping animals doesn’t begin in the exam room.

It begins long before they ever need me.

Every day, I see the results of good nutrition…and poor nutrition. I’ve treated skin problems, digestive problems, weight problems, joint problems, and countless other conditions where nutrition wasn’t the entire answer, but it was almost always part of the picture.

Good nutrition can’t solve every health problem.

Broken bones need to be set.

Infections may require medication.

Cancer requires proper diagnosis and treatment.

Emergencies require emergency care.

But good health has to start somewhere. It starts with giving the body what it needs every single day.

That’s what led me to create my own dog food.

Not because I wanted another business. Because I wanted another way to help animals.

That philosophy didn’t begin in veterinary school. It began much earlier.

I grew up on our family’s dairy farm in the Netherlands. We didn’t have a lot of money. We worked hard for everything we had.

Every animal had a purpose, every harvest mattered, and every dollar counted.

We milked cows, raised pigs, cared for horses, gathered eggs, and grew much of our own food. On a farm, you learn very quickly that healthy animals and healthy families go hand in hand. When an animal became sick, it wasn’t simply an inconvenience. It affected the entire family.

A dairy cow wasn’t just a cow.

She represented milk production, income, security, and years of careful breeding.

Keeping animals healthy wasn’t simply good husbandry.

It was how families survived.

Those lessons never left me.

Years later, after moving to the United States and opening my own practice, I realized pet owners weren’t very different from the farmers I grew up around. Whether someone owns a dairy farm or a Golden Retriever sleeping on the couch, they want the same thing.

A healthy animal.

One experience before veterinary school changed my life forever. My brother had a young sow struggling to deliver her first litter. Our veterinarian’s hands were too large to reach through her pelvis, so he looked at me, a young skinny kid with long arms and told me exactly what to do.

One by one, I helped deliver those piglets.

I still remember how I felt afterward.

I had helped bring new life into the world.

Right then, I knew this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

That day taught me I wanted to spend my life helping animals. The next fifty years taught me that helping them doesn’t always begin with surgery or medicine. Sometimes it begins with what’s in the food bowl.

I’ve been asked how I still enjoy practicing veterinary medicine after all these years.

That’s why.

Helping animals never gets old.

Veterinary school also teaches you something that has guided my entire career. You don’t treat a stomach or a skin problem or an ear.

You treat the whole animal.

Human medicine has specialists for nearly every part of the body.

Veterinarians have to understand all of it because everything is connected.

We study anatomy, physiology, surgery, medicine, reproduction, nutrition, and disease. You learn to step back and look at the complete picture. That philosophy became the foundation of my practice. Don’t chase symptoms.

Find the cause.

Over hundreds of thousands of patients, another lesson became impossible to ignore.

Nutrition matters.

Not because it fixes everything.

Because it supports everything.

Food builds muscle.

Supports the immune system.

Helps maintain healthy skin.

Supports healthy digestion.

Helps dogs maintain a healthy weight.

Supports recovery.

Supports healthy aging.

Nutrition doesn’t replace veterinary medicine.  It makes veterinary medicine more effective. It supports it. And I saw that lesson play out thousands of times. Eventually I found myself asking the same question over and over.

Why couldn’t we create a dog food built around everything I’d learned during more than fifty years of practice?

Keep it simple.

Keep it practical.

Use quality ingredients.

Focus on nutrition before marketing.

Create something I would feel comfortable recommending to my own clients. More importantly… Create something I would be proud to feed my own dogs.

If my name was going on the bag, it had to stand for something.

It had to reflect the same philosophy that has guided my practice for more than five decades.

Practical.

Dependable.

Accessible.

Everything your dog needs, and nothing it doesn’t.

At a price ordinary families can afford.

Sometimes I think back to the young man who dreamed of owning a veterinary practice. I never imagined where life would take me. Moving halfway around the world. Opening a practice in rural Michigan. Writing books. Being on television. Meeting families from every corner of the country. Or creating my own dog food.

But when I look back, I realize all of it comes from the same person.

A boy growing up on a dairy farm.

Then a veterinarian who believes in treating the whole animal.

Still a doctor who believes common sense matters.

And someone who has spent more than fifty years trying to make quality animal care more accessible to the families who need it.

Creating my own dog food was never about becoming a dog food company. It was about taking everything I’d learned over fifty years and putting it into something that could help dogs every single day.

If our food helps one dog stay healthier…

If it gives one family another option they can trust…

Or if it helps prevent one problem before it ever reaches the exam room…

Then we’ve done some good.

Because I’ve always believed the best veterinary medicine starts with compassion, common sense, and giving owners the tools they need to help their animals live longer, healthier, happier lives.

That’s why I created my own dog food.

We’ll see ya.

— Dr. Jan Pol