Tripp was rescued in September of 2009 from a high kill shelter in Morehead City. He had been scheduled to be put down a day earlier than the day Kristy could drive the five hours to pick him up, so they charged an extra $50 on top of the adoption fee that was required.
Kristy had to leave work early to drive to Morehead City and still couldn’t make it prior to them closing, but someone was willing to wait on her. It was well after midnight when Kristy made it back home. Tripp weighed only 39lbs and he was 8-9 months old. He is now a healthy 80-85lbs.
Tripp is in the store just about every day and is one of the major reasons we own this store. I tell this story,a lot. When we first started (as I call it) collecting dogs, I couldn’t understand how we could spend so much money on dog food. I grew up in a house where Gravy Train and Alpo were always given to our dogs. I thought it was normal for dogs to live only nine years! When Kristy wanted to spend $30 on Eukenuba, I said, “no way.” That didn’t go over so well and since she wears the pants in the family, she won out.
Over the next five years, we tried different foods, but it wasn’t until we met Stacy Fano at Village Paws and Claws in Birkdale Village that we started trying out other foods, more exotic foods. One of them was Taste of the Wild. All the dogs loved it including Tripp. As we fed this food, we started to see very subtle changes in our dogs. Every time I would take Tripp out somewhere people wanted to pet him. Each time I would get the same response as they pet Tripp, “He’s so soft. Did you just bathe him?” I didn’t have the heart to tell them that it had been months since I last bathed this dog. I started to wonder why people continued to say this even though I haven’t washed Tripp. That’s when I realized that it was the food.
That has led us to using different foods that are even better than Taste of the Wild. With us trying all the foods, we became more aware of what is considered a nutritious food and one that is not so nutritious. Unfortunately, there are a lot of foods that would compare to eating at McDonalds for humans. No wonder many dogs are passing away much too early or getting debilitating diseases such as liver and kidney disease. It turned out that owning and operating a store would place us right where we belonged.