Salka makes things that go on your dog. Generously, that is about five minutes of their day.
The rest of it — what is in the bowl, what they sleep on, what they chew, where they walk — is everything else, and we make none of it. But the people who turn our bottle over and read the back are turning other things over too. It seemed strange to have built a whole brand on reading labels and then only ever talk about our own.
What this series is
Good Company is a recurring feature about the parts of your dog's day we have nothing to do with. Each edition, one small brand, doing something we don't, to a standard we recognise.
The rule we have set ourselves is simple: we only feature a brand whose ingredient list we would be happy to see printed next to ours. Not a brand with good marketing. A brand with a good list.
Edition one: Crude Carnivore
Crude Carnivore makes herb-infused bone broth for dogs and cats, simmered in Du Quoin, southern Illinois. Seven shelf-stable broths, made since 2019. Their line is “A splash of CRUDE transforms your pet's food” — it is a topper, not a meal, and they are clear about that, which is the first thing we liked.
The founder is the reason we called
Crude Carnivore was started by Flo, who grew up in Germany around dogs and horses, moved to southern Illinois for college in 2011, and stayed. She has a bachelor's degree in animal production and a master's in companion animal nutrition. She managed a local pet supply store. She has four dogs and four cats, most of whom she took in as strays.
That combination is rarer than it sounds. A lot of pet brands are founded by people who love dogs and learned the category afterwards — ours included. Flo studied the nutrition first and built the product second, and it shows in how carefully the company talks about what the broth is for.
The label test
We read other people's labels the same way we ask you to read ours. Here is what stood out.
The sourcing is specific, not adjectival. Bones from pasture-raised farms. Herbs, vegetables and mushrooms organically grown. Most of it bought from small family farms in their own corner of southern Illinois. “Locally sourced” is a phrase anyone can print; naming the region and the farm type is a harder thing to say and an easier thing to check.
They say what is not in it. No pesticides, no herbicides. That is the same shape of claim we make about synthetic fragrance and sulfates — a negative claim is only worth anything if the positive list is short enough to verify, and theirs is.
The ingredient names are food. Dandelion, thyme, parsley. You do not need a glossary. We would rather a label read like a kitchen than a lab, and when it doesn't, there should be a good reason — which is exactly the standard we hold ourselves to on the shampoo bottle.
What Flo was actually solving
By her own account, what pushed her from working in pet retail to making something was noticing how little moisture was in what most pets were being fed. The broth came out of that observation rather than out of a trend.
We are not going to tell you what your dog should eat — we make shampoo. But we will say that the reasoning we could follow from the outside was about the diet, not about the packaging, and that is not always the case.
Where it fits, honestly
A topper is a topper. It goes on top of a diet you have already chosen, and choosing that diet is a conversation with your vet, not with a grooming company or a broth company. If your dog has a diagnosed condition, is on a prescription diet, or has a history of pancreatitis or food sensitivities, ask before you add anything new to the bowl — including this.
What we like about it is narrower and more useful than a health claim: it is a short, legible list of real ingredients from a named place, made by someone who studied the subject.
Why we are doing this at all
Our whole argument is that what goes on your dog accumulates — a small dose of synthetic fragrance every bath, every paw wipe, every freshening spray. That argument does not stop at the skin. It is the same argument about the bowl, the bed, and the chew, and we are not the people to make it about any of those.
So we will keep finding the people who are. If you run a small brand doing this properly and you would like to be in a future edition, email us with Good Company in the subject line.
This article is general information, not veterinary or nutritional advice. Diet changes belong with your veterinarian. We are describing another company's product as we understand it from their own published materials; for the current formula and feeding guidance, go to the source.
Go and try it.
Flo has set up a code for our readers: SALKA gets you 20% off your first order at crudecarnivore.com. Read her label while you are there — it is the shortest one we have put next to ours in a while.
The outside of the dog is still ours. The Bath Duo is where most people start — hypoallergenic shampoo and conditioner, at the same price as buying them separately.
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