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The unconditional love we feel from our pets can feed our souls, which is probably why we don't mind slipping them extra treats.

Now and then.

Over the years, our dogs become not simply companions but full fledged family members, which is a key reason that the Lehigh Valley’s pet supply business is booming.

On this edition of Lehigh Valley Rising, you'll meet four local businesses and an awful lot of lovable pups.

Speaking of which, our show begins in Allentown as leader of the Pack Canine Institute, Lisa McDonald's.

All in one dog training, grooming and boarding center with big plans on the horizon.

Welcome back, puppy people.

We are going to get down to puppy play time.

One, two, three.

Release the puppies.

Go play with Leader of the Pack Canine Institute.

Our motto is creating happy and balanced dogs one leader at a time.

Dogs are pack animals.

They thrive off of a social hierarchy.

And you're going to have a lot of disruption in your home if your puppy believes that they are anywhere on top of that hierarchy.

We use what's called the balanced approach to dog training, which is positive, reinforcement and also correcting behaviors that we don't want.

So the dogs don't get confused.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, what we're going to start today is called the Gotcha Command.

Puppy curriculum is a six week course.

They learn everything from household manners of housebreaking, crate training, mouthing, napping, all the things that could possibly get a dog to have to be rehomed.

This is teaching some impulse control.

It's tough with puppies, but this is where you start practicing.

We're shaping behaviors.

Then after the puppy curriculum, we go into adult dog beginner obedience.

It's another six week course where now the families are focusing more on on leash manners and skills and strengthening the bond, the trust, respect, relationship.

As these dogs are coming into adolescence and adulthood, they're finding their spot in the hierarchy.

Then we go into intermediate.

Intermediate.

Obedience is more for starting an off leash experience, increasing distraction levels, and then increasing their impulse control on the handler.

And then in the advanced course, we get into mostly all off leash obedience and higher levels of distractions as well.

Lisa was training dogs for a while with some other folks.

And.

It got to the point where we figured if we're going to work this hard, she probably wants to do it for herself.

Started this with intentions of just dog training and it grew into all the different services from the training aspect.

This is our lobby and reception area.

This is where all of our canine guests get checked in and checked out and this is where all the fun begins.

So let's go see the rest of the facility.

And this is our grooming room and this is Lois, our groomer, and she is grooming Sunshine right now.

We have a seven day a week grooming here at Leader of the Pack.

And this is our feeding area.

This is where the dogs get fed their breakfast, their lunch and their dinners.

And Ashley is actually giving them some mid-day feedings right now.

We don't do mass open feedings that way.

There is no risk of possible dogs fighting over food They can enjoy their food without feeling intimidated by another dog's presence.

They get some downtime and then they can get put back into the playrooms to go back with their friends and enjoy play.

And these are our playrooms.

This is where they do engage in play.

This is room one.

This is where our adult dogs, small dogs engage.

And this is our puppy room.

And this room is where all the puppies get to play and engage with their own match jaw and paw size and energy levels as well.

Somebody needs an overnight stay or an extended stay.

We offer cage free boarding with the staff that come in and stay with the dogs overnight, with the dogs on the floor, which is wonderful for dogs that have separation anxiety.

And they wouldn't do well in a room overnight by themself.

And this is our room three.

This is our adult dog high energy room for adolescents or young adult dogs that enjoy busy play and more activity.

And then our room four is where all the senior dogs are.

The lower energy dogs still get to socialize and engage as a pack but don't have to deal with the bouncy high energy that Room three has.

And the staff does a great job making sure that the dogs are in the appropriate room to match that energy level.

And the jaw and paw size is critical for healthy play.

The private kennel and the private boarding rooms is a wonderful environment for dogs who might not enjoy being with the pack.

It's a comfortable stay for them.

They get plenty of human engagement, just no dog on dog engagement.

Lisa and I have been together 34 plus years.

This has been a hard journey for us the past 13 years.

It's been seven days a week for a long time.

You start to think, is it worth it?

Are you wearing it down?

This is a 24 hour business.

We never close.

But the staffing and the support that you get from your management team is critical to run this type of business.

It's really rewarding to see people that are struggling with a puppy and see that dog a year later.

Into adulthood.

And being an upstanding member of society, seeing that you can keep a dog in a family and help a family unit enjoy the dog that they brought into their home to bring love and joy instead of frustration.

It's a wonderful business.

That's very, very fulfilling for us stay tuned to the end of the show because the folks from Leader of the Pack will be dropping by, possibly with one of their dogs.

Now moving on to the pet food world, Fresh Pet has long been a game changer.

They were among the first to offer organic, healthy pet food with pet nutrition in mind.

And while they've grown exponentially over the last decade, they remain committed to the well-being of pets, people and the planet.

If you love your pet, there's nothing better than knowing that you're making your pet happy and fresh.

Pet makes your pet incredibly happy.

Freshpet is an organization that makes pet food.

We make fresh pet food for dogs and cats.

Were found in virtually any place that you can buy pet food today across the United States and now in Canada.

The UK.

And we entered France earlier this year.

The mission at Freshpet is seeing passionate about pets, people and the planet.

And so let's start on the pets.

Penny That's right.

Penny You just better go into your house and stay there.

Back in 1956, dogs were sleeping in dog houses in your backyard, surrounded by a chain link fence and with a collar on that had a chain attached to it.

That's right.

Go into your house and stay there.

And since then, the dogs role in our lives have changed dramatically.

Dogs went from sleeping in the backyard to sleeping in our house.

And not just in our house, in our bedroom, not just in our bedroom, either in our bed or in a special quilted bed that we made with their name embroidered in the side.

So the food hadn't kept up.

The food was looking like the food that he'd been fed in the fifties, in the sixties.

And yet the role of the dog had changed.

The second part of that was the concept of being able to eat fresh, healthy food.

And if you kind of marry the two together, the humanization of pets, the ability to access and feed ourselves in a healthy way, that kind of gave rise to the opportunity to really revolutionize the industry.

And so the goal here was to treat the pets like the other members of our family and feed them the highest quality, freshest, all natural food.

This is a 6 pound fresh pet chicken roll, and this is probably our best selling item.

And they're made here in Bethlehem.

We are a pet food company, but the reality is that we hold our standards at the same level or in some cases higher standards than those of food manufacturing facilities for human consumption.

So right here we're in our mixing and processing step.

Right behind me.

I have fresh chicken.

This is where we gently cook our product after having gone through the cooking step Our product is chilled to a temperature below 40 degrees.

All right.

So now that we went through the whole process of making our meals, I thought we'd open a bag and try it out and see what it looks like, what it smells like.

Right.

So it smells delicious.

In Bethlehem, this is the heart and soul of Freshpet today.

Two manufacturing facilities that are capable of producing about $600 million a year of Freshpet We have our R&D facility here, so it's all the labs and the pilot plant facility where we do the invention of all the new ways in which you make fresh pet.

And then on top of that, we have the administrative support that goes with that.

All that is done here.

Our people focus is largely on the team members.

Our employees.

And so we provide really good benefits for our maternal benefits, paternity benefits.

We're going to be introducing paw-ternity leave, which is, if you adopt a pet, to give you time off.

We have food downstairs.

They're free to take as much as they need.

On top of that, when you leave, at the end of the day, we encourage you to take home a package of fresh pet every single day.

We added a tuition reimbursement program as well, providing employees with an opportunity to get that development and training.

2021 We had that awful revolving door we were hiring as many people as we were losing.

And so there was this recognition that we've got to shift.

We can't keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

We launched last year a program we call the Fresh Pet Academy.

The Freshpet Academy basically allows an employee to kind of progress across a ladder over a compressed period of time and develop skills in different process areas within our facility.

While they're doing that, they're also able to earn a higher wage rate, and we've tied that very closely to their compensation and equity.

So you earn more, but you've also got the ability to amass wealth over time.

And that doesn't just impact the employee, it impacts their family, the communities that they come from as well.

We give everybody stock.

They're all owners.

We slash our labor turnover.

We were sitting north of 50%.

I would say, just over a year ago, and now we're sitting at just above 20%, which is awesome.

So for me, when I go home, at the end of the day, if I can point to people and say, yup, their time here and things that we did made their days better and made them achieve their goals, that's success.

Freshpet is obsessed with employees and their development and I guess that's where we're we're leaning, is just to be a radically human organization.

So we're very focused on pets, people on the planet.

And the planet side of it is we buy wind power credits to power the entire facility, LED lights.

We do a water treatment onsite to make sure that the water we return to to the local community is as clean as it could possibly be.

We do all kinds of things to be consistent with the values of our consumers and frankly, just do the right thing.

I've been in the consumer packaged goods business for my entire career.

It's now been 37 years of all the business I've seen.

I've never seen a business that had as robust a business model as Freshpet did.

I love working at Freshpet because there are authentic, genuine people here.

I'm surrounded by amazing people with an organization that has an incredible mission.

Mm hmm.

Dog food.

Good enough for humans to eat.

Hey, is it chow time?

Now, our next featured company started out in 1938 as a simple feed store.

Since then, Phillips Pet Supply has grown into one of the biggest pet supply distributors in the country.

And while they provide feed for pets across America, they also help animals in crisis around the globe.

Phillips Pet Supply we’re the nation's largest distributor of pet specialty Our current square footage of the warehouse is about 280,000 square foot.

We have about 25,000 items that are housed in this warehouse, out of this facility.

We'll do about 300,000 units a week or cases a week.

We distribute products across the country, whether it's pet supplies, pet food.

We also do small animal, reptile and aquatics.

This aisle, specifically, this houses a majority of our aquatics and aquarium tanks.

We don't actually make any products here.

We distribute there's roughly 674 brands that we distribute, making up about 32,000 SKUs.

We have 11 distribution centers.

So we have a facility in Portland, Oregon, going down the coast.

We have one in Sacramento, California, Phoenix, Arizona.

Denver, Colorado.

Billings, Montana.

Lansing, Michigan.

Taunton, Mass.

Our Easton facility.

Spartanburg, South Carolina.

And Plant City, Florida.

When somebody asks me, What do you do?

I say, we sell squeaky toys.

Our CEO is from Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

So this area has always been near and dear to him.

And we've continued to keep our footprint and our corporate office here in the valley.

We started in 1938, in Germansville moved to Bath and of course moved here to Easton, Pennsylvania.

One of the things that Phillips was the first to the market with was fresh and frozen capabilities, which is also a very large differentiator between us and our competitors.

Our competitors are trying to catch up in that space.

As they try to catch up, we try to expand.

We as Phillips, as a distributor, we're proud to say that we were the first accredited distributor in the pet industry with the Pet Sustainability Coalition Pets Sustainability Coalition is a group of hundreds of manufacturers and some distributors that really banded together as an organization to bring sustainability into the pet specialty space.

We're always looking to help enhance the lives of dogs, cats and other animals.

And we're also looking for that unique product that's going to help stores enhance their opportunity to get consumers awareness and bring them into the stores.

Interesting product could be a product called Jimny.

The protein based in a normal dog and cat food is going to be traditionally beef, pork, chicken, turkey.

Jiminy is actually made out of cricket meal, which is as high in protein content as all the other proteins that I just mentioned, but is unique and it's sustainable.

If you take, let's say, a pound of beef protein and compare it to a pound of cricket protein, there is a heck of a lot more protein level and that cricket than there is in that beef.

Surprisingly.

To be a good steward, we have to make sure, one, we're helping take care of the environment, take care of our people, but also take care of the dogs, cats, small animals and fish.

As we go forward with our partners, our customers and brick and mortar independent pet stores, the mom and pops, they believe that we need to all help save the planet.

We're very excited to be able to say that we're partners with greater good charities.

We've been working with greater good for years internally in the United States on disaster relief.

They've got a great program that allows us to quickly donate products to them.

So recently we did have a rather large hurricane occur down in Florida.

We were able to get various.

Products like.

Crates and treats and food down to that area for those pets that maybe were wandering around.

We currently work with greater good to make sure that we can get products and services to those animals and humans remaining in Ukraine.

You know, we're here to help everybody.

And it's not just the food.

It's it's to sustain the active lifestyles of these animals.

Everything we can do to give them a little semblance of their old life before the disaster is going to help everybody.

And it makes us feel good.

And it I think it makes everybody feel good all the way through.

You know, we get a lot of small little mom and pop stores calling us up, asking can they stick a box on our truck that can help and can we get it down to the relief area?

Everybody really wants to help.

If they don't know how to help, we're here to help them.

Help.

It's just a good feeling, knowing that we're doing things that matter.

Phillips delivers pet supplies to stores around the country.

But what if you want ready made meals for your pet, sent directly to your home?

Well, Spot and Tango offers just that.

Born in the kitchen of a New York City apartment.

They've grown big enough to move into their own brand new facility in Upper Macungie Township, which they hope will be their forever home.

Tank.

We are a direct to consumer e-commerce brand in the health and wellness space.

We manufacture high quality, fresh human grade recipes for dogs.

Our products can only be purchased on spotandtango.com We don't sell in brick and mortar.

We don't own other websites.

So exclusively on spotandtango.com The food we're making, I've tasted it myself.

It's using the same ingredients that we would feed our families.

That really sets it apart from the majority of the pet food industry.

When we make a new recipe, the first thing we do is we test it with our own dogs.

We see if they're liking it.

Our fresh recipes.

We have turkey and red quinoa.

We have beef and millet.

And lamb and brown rice.

On the Unkibble side we have a chicken with a beef and a cod and salmon recipe which is hypoallergenic.

And based on dog's historical experience with kibble, the flavor profile of our products is dramatically different.

We have a mini goldendoodle named Jack.

He's the inspiration for the brand we've been cooking fresh.

human grade recipes for Jack, dating back years to when he was a puppy.

In fact, my mother in law was cooking recipes for her dog, so they're really family recipes and a part of who we are as people.

Story started in an incubator kitchen in Queens, and before that, a studio apartment kitchen.

We used to be Bruer premium pet food company.

We relied on co-manufacturing partners across the country to manufacture our products.

This is our first owned and operated facility.

And here we are.

In our brand new innovation lab.

You can see that.

It's actually still under construction, as I'm speaking, designed this from scratch to perfectly meet our needs.

We have an oven where we can cook our freshly cooked products.

We're going to have meat grinders and formers and mixers to make our kibble product as well.

And we're really.

Going to be able to use this space a bunch of different ways.

And our unique, fresh, dry process maintains the original ingredient and nutritional.

Integrity of our products individual pieces of spinach, green beans, cranberries, flax seeds all combine into one.

So it's all fresh ingredients, but it's a dry format.

Unkibble is the antithesis of kibble.

This is dried Unkibble product.

Any powder that was created while we were making Unkibble is filtered out so customers don't see that in their final pouches.

It falls onto this conveyor belt and is then brought up to this machine here, which is the packaging machine itself.

This machine automatically weighs the correct amount for every single bag.

Another member of the team fills it with some extra inclusions that we add on top for additional flavor.

And then we put each bag through the sealing machine here.

Once the pouch is sealed, it falls onto this conveyor belt, goes underneath this metal detector.

It's then put in final boxes and sent to our distribution center where we pick and pack it and send it to our customers.

We know customers are interested in new recipes and new proteins, whether that's within food or in snacks.

And this dedicated facility will allow us to do that.

It's a lot of like minded companies here in Lehigh Valley, whether it's Amazon or FedEx or other pet food brands, I'd say, secondly, infrastructure in terms of existing buildings, highways, road infrastructure to access the rest of the country.

We think about a direct to consumer model.

Third people.

Labor pool.

There’s awesome people in Lehigh Valley.

We just launched a few weeks ago, officially.

We're hiring over 100 new people here in the next 36 months.

Pet ownership is certainly not a criteria for employment, but nonetheless, I think pets bring a certain energy to everyone's lives.

And as a brand and as a person, that's who we are and who I am.

And so I think when we hire people in particular.

We look for those qualities.

We've been doing this for four and a half years.

It's been a fun journey.

We've got a lot of opportunity ahead of us as we continue to scale the business and really educate and boost awareness for what we're doing and really changing the industry.

And we do that every day and we show up and we're happy to be a member of the Lehigh Valley Community.

Well, it's always great seeing new businesses right here in the valley.

Now, as promised, we have a special treat today.

Joining me from leader of the Pack Canine Institute is the leader of the pack, Lisa McDonald.

You're here with a special friend or family member, I assume, Sparky McDonald This is Sparky.

Tell us a little bit about Sparky.

How old is he and where did you get him?

He's almost a two year old Pomeranian.

And we actually adopted him from a family who it just wasn't working out for them.

For whatever reason, he is turned in from a foster dog to my dog at our at our facility.

And he's doing great with our pack at home.

And where is Sparky in his training?

Sparky just started our adult dog beginner course.

It's a six week course and he's in week two currently, so he's working on his sits downs and his stand positions.

And you talk about learning theory.

What exactly is that?

And can you show us a little bit of it with Sparky?

Of course, we have a foundational learning theory, and when I want to work with a dog, I want to think like a dog.

So I want to get into their mind and dog senses and how they utilize them are in an actual order and that starts at birth.

When puppies are born, they are deaf and blind, but they use their sense of smell as a primary way to find mom and and to start eating.

After a couple of weeks, the eyes start to open and then the ears open last for hearing.

So I have a learning theory that I like to teach even an adult dog like Sparky how to do a command using smell than vision and then hearing lasts where we get to a word only.

So these three stages are called lure, where we're gonna use a scent lure to maneuver the nose and move the body into the action we want.

Once the action has a meaning to the dog, we're going to call it something.

We give the verbal command.

But I got to get vision in there first.

So we go to word and hand signal is step two.

And then step three.

Our ultimate goal is to just say the word.

And of course there's different distraction levels.

So you always want to start in very low levels of distractions and then build to a backyard.

And then the final environment with word only would be like a park where there's high levels of stimulation.

Right.

And the adage you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Not true.

Not true that we work with with senior dogs as well, who do need either behavior modification or implementation of commands.

They can absolutely learn takes a little longer because we're reversing some old behaviors and teaching new ones.

Right.

So can we see Sparky do a little bit of his stuff?

So he's working on his three positions of sit down and stand.

So if I'm going to use my learning theory, I kind of start with that sense of smell.

And if I'm going to lure a dog, I can move the nose to move the body.

And if I want to teach him, sit, the head must go up.

So then I can let him know that that action of putting his little butt down made me very happy.

And you only have one to 3 seconds to tell him.

Good boy.

Positive reinforcement of some sort, because after 3 seconds, he's off on to something else.

Right.

You have to be very timely There’s this magic number in dog training called 80%.

And I have to get eight out of ten.

No begging, baby.

You got to get eight out of ten successful lures, right before I could go to word and hand signal.

So when you have the food in your hand and you're luring, you don't ever want to say the command sit.

You don't want to say the word because what will happen is dogs will then associate the word with the smell.

And then they're going to say, I'm not going to say to you, give me the cookie.

You know?

So I want to make sure that when we have this in our hand, I'm just reinforcing the action.

I kind of zip my lip by saying nothing.

I just lure him head up but down to reinforce.

And I do that eight times because that's our magic number.

Once you get eight of those, now I go to word and hand signal.

So now he knows that action makes me happy.

I'm going to call that sit.

So I have to get the hand signal out first because vision overrides hearing.

So I'm going to say the word followed by the visual reminder.

In about a half second delay Sit, good.

And then the reward comes from your opposite hand.

Because remember, we're not having this smell out here now that he's working on vision, not scent.

Interest yet.

Very nice.

Good job.

And I would do eight of those.

And a well-trained dog is a happy dog.

It is.

And you know, it's keeping them in homes.

People that don't take the time and invest it in training their dogs.

Dogs can then get some behavioral issues, separation anxiety, resource guarding.

They can get bored, start digging up the backyard, jumping on grandma.

Now they're at the shelter.

So it's so important as puppy get them into puppy class start the training process early.

As we get eight sits, at this point word only I'm at hearing now set yes.

Lisa thanks so much for bringing Sparky and all this great knowledge because all of our pet owners out there, all of our dog owners, you know, I'm sure are riveted.

And maybe they'll get to use some of this and even give you a holler if they need some help.

Sure.

I appreciate you having me.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

And thank you and thank you at home for watching.

You can catch this in past episodes online at PBS 39 dot org or on the PBS app for all of us here at Lehigh Valley Rising, this is Grover Silcox saying we'll see you next time.

BSI Corporate Benefits is a proud supporter of Lehigh Valley Rising additional support provided by St Luke's University Health Network.