I am sure it will come as no surprise that the sales manager and I spend a lot of time talking to people about soap, especially our dog soap. We are marketing the heck out of our dog soap. There seem to be two major questions we are asked regularly. One, why soap? Two, why dog soap? Why make soap is an easy question to answer. Jenn had been talking about and reading about soap for over a year. When she finished her masters, she began to put her words into action….she made soap. Eventually, there is only so much soap two people can consume. It has to go somewhere and our customers are the beneficiaries. Why make dog soap is still a very easy answer and yet the most difficult to put into words. It is still in a lot of ways an open wound for both Jenn and me. It began several years ago, and yet it was quite sometime before we really grasped the relevance. Here is our story: It begins with fleas. Yep, the common everyday flea. If you have a dog then you probably have faced the dreaded flea. We live in a warm climate (near Wilmington, NC) and fleas are our nemesis. We have always had dogs and therefore always been on the front line in the war on fleas. It seems like a simple matter. Go to the vet pick up the latest and greatest in flea treatment. Come home, put on rubber gloves and administer between your beloved’s shoulder blades. Only our dog Franklyn got sick each and every time we did this “treatment”. Within a week, we would be at the vet and he would be diagnosed with pancreatitis. Home we would come a few hundred dollars lighter with antibiotics and a “special diet”. Later, after doing our own research we came to the conclusion that the flea treatments we were giving him to “help him” were poisoning him. In fact, we believe that it eventually killed him. (Although we could never get a doctor to say anything that would reinforce our beliefs) The ingredients found in the topical flea treatments are long and difficult to pronounce. They include things like fipronil, ethonal, polyvinlpyrrolidone, butylhydroxytoluene and carbitol. The last four ingredients are listed on the packaging as “inert”. Makes them sound harmless, doesn’t it? However, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the inert ingredients on topical flea treatments seem to be MORE TOXIC than the active ingredients. The EPA highly regulates the active ingredients in a product, but there is barely any regulation of the inert ingredients. This is allowed to happen because the inert ingredients are thought of as the “secret recipe” and are allowed to be kept hidden from other companies that might steal that recipe. What are some of the health effects seen from these pesticides that we so eagerly put on our pets? Well, fipronil can cause organ damage, thyroid cancer and damage to the nervous system. Ethanol can cause birth defects. Butylhydroxytoluene causes cancer, and carbitol can cause nerve and organ damage. So, what is the alternative? Living with fleas is dangerous in its own right and, let’s face it, annoying for everyone. The safest way to keep pesticides off your pet and keep them flea free is to use a comprehensive approach including herbal supplements, cleaning with all natural soaps and essential oils that repel bugs, and other environmentally friendly pest control alternatives. So, we make all natural dog soap to keep our fur kids safe from harmful chemicals and also to hopefully keep others from having to go through the same agony that we endured. Gayle (with help from Jenn when I became too emotional to write more)