www.simplyfordogs.com

Dogs get tired of eating the same thing all the time, just like we do. Whether you feed your dog dry food, canned food, or homemade food, enthusiasm wanes when there’s no variety. Local recipe-tester and cooking-class teacher Barbara Beery began making additions to her dog’s food to make it more palatable: one day a little parsley, another day some Worcestershire sauce. Over time, she discovered a variety of flavors that not only revived her dog’s enthusiasm but also benefited her dog’s health. “Then one day, I had a eureka moment,” Beery laughs. “I could make what I had learned into a product. There are a lot of people making dog treats and toys; this would be something entirely new!”

Partnering with her longtime friend Lutie Butler, Beery developed five different flavors of seasoning blends: Tail-Waggin’ BBQ, Top Dog Teriyaki Bowl, Bow Wow Bacon Cheese­burger, Pawsitively Pizza, and Poochie Pot Pie. Dogs are very motivated by scent, and each seasoning blend is wildly aromatic. A tiny sprinkle of seasoning blend, less than half a teaspoon, is all that is needed to get your dog ecstatically interested.

Each blend contains only the finest natural ingredients, primarily powdered broth, acidophilus, herbs, spices, and dried cheeses and vegetables. Many herbs, such as parsley, dill, and ginger, are great for your dog’s health, and acidophilus is as beneficial for canine digestion as it is for ours.

I could not recommend a product so effusively without trying it out on my own (exceedingly well-nourished, rather finicky) dogs. If anything, Beery and Butler are not making wild enough claims. An unseasoned bowl of food, having been greeted initially with cheerless disdain and a long-suffering gaze into the distant horizon, was manically gobbled down once a pinch of Tail-Waggin’ BBQ had been applied. Pawsitively Pizza had an equally dramatic success, and the only reason I haven’t tried the other flavors is that they have already sold out.

You can get Make It Gourmet at Fetch, Midtown Grooming, Camp 4 Paws, Sweet Charity, and the Menagerie ($9.95, and a single bottle lasts for months).

This article appears in January 18 • 2008.

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Kate Thornberry worked in renowned Austin restaurants for 30 years while pursuing a reasonably successful career in music. She began contributing to the Chronicle in 1988 and became a regular contributor to the food section in 2006.