Our Story
We didn’t start with a brand.
We started with a best friend.
Long before Verity Pet™ existed, there was a cast of animals who would shape my life in ways I could never have imagined.
I was that kid who was constantly looking for something furry, feathered, scaly, or four-legged to interact with. If there was an animal nearby, it immediately caught my attention and curiosity. I was fascinated by their personalities, their interactions with one another and with people, their natural behaviors, and simply the beauty and uniqueness of each one.
My first dog was Patches, and as a teenager, Ripples became my first cat. They were simply part of the growing collection of animals and experiences that surrounded my life.
Animals were always part of our family life, too. My grandmother had Candy, a very special dog who would say her prayers at mealtime with the family, and my parents had two gorgeous Siamese cats. I also took riding lessons for a short time, and my love of horses has never really left me. Even now, I still love every opportunity to interact with them.
From my teenage years into young adulthood, my fascination with animals expanded into a rotating cast of pets—including hamsters, ferrets, iguanas, and even piranhas—much to the exhaustion of my parents and friends, I'm sure.
Later, my parents had Maggie, a Boston Terrier who became my sister to the core. She was an incredible dog and would eventually share another important chapter of my life with Jack and Coal.
Little did I know that the curiosity, observation, and fascination I had with animals as a child would one day become part of something much bigger.
I just loved them.
That fascination never left me.
SPIRIT
As a young adult, I found Spirit at the Erie County SPCA with my best friend.
Spirit became one of the great loves of my lifetime. He was my guardian, my best friend, and a constant presence through some of the most important years of my life.
He gave me a profound understanding of the human-animal bond and the extraordinary trust, devotion, and love that can exist between us.
When Spirit eventually became ill with tumors and disease, losing him was devastating. I was inconsolable.
It was my first great heartbreak from losing an animal, and it changed me.
KITTY BOY
Then came Kitty Boy.
Spirit and Kitty Boy eventually became best friends. My relationship with Kitty Boy gave me a much deeper appreciation for cats—their personalities, their needs, and the very different ways they connect and trust. That experience opened my heart to cats and kittens in a new way. As my rescue work evolved over the years, cats and kittens became an important part of the animals I would go on to rescue, rehabilitate, foster, and rehome.
I began to understand how different animals communicate, how different their personalities and boundaries can be, and how differently they experience trust, friendship, affection, and independence.
Every animal had something to teach me.
BRUNO
Then came Bruno.
A friend rescued Bruno and his siblings from intentional disposal. Bruno was young and frightened, and caring for him opened my eyes to how much emotional and psychological trauma a rescue animal can carry.
Bruno taught me that rehabilitation isn't simply about getting an animal out of a difficult situation and giving them somewhere safe to live.
It takes patience. Nurturing. Consistency. Understanding.
Sometimes it means learning to recognize fear where you might otherwise see difficult behavior, and helping an animal feel safe enough to trust again.
Those lessons would repeat themselves throughout the many animals I would go on to rescue, rehabilitate, foster, and rehome.
Every animal was different. Every history was different. And every one required us to meet them where they were.
That experience was invaluable.
JACK & COAL
Then came Jack.
Jack entered my life during an especially difficult period, and somehow he brought light back into it.
There really aren't words that adequately describe what Jack meant to me.
He gave me devotion, companionship, laughter, comfort, and a kind of unconditional love that only an animal can give. His presence became woven into my life in a way that is difficult to explain unless you've experienced that kind of bond yourself.
The bond I shared with Jack was deeply reminiscent of what I had experienced with Spirit. They were different dogs, with completely different personalities, but both held an extraordinary place in my heart.
Losing Jack was epic.
It was one of those losses that doesn't simply make you sad. It changes the shape of your life.
Jack died of heart failure.
And once again, I was left facing the reality of how much an animal can mean to you—and how helpless you can feel when their health begins to fail.
Then there was Coal.
Coal was my sweet, complicated, sensitive boy. His allergies and sensitivities opened another door for me, making me look much more closely at what animals were exposed to every day.
Not just food.
Ingredients. Products. Chemicals. Pharmaceuticals. The environment. Everything.
I wanted to understand what was happening, why it was happening, and whether some of the things animals were exposed to routinely were actually necessary—or whether we were simply accepting them because they had become normal.
Coal made me question much more deeply what we put into our animals, what we put on them, what we use around them, and what consequences those choices might have over the course of their lives.
His health challenges ultimately became part of a much larger education for me.
And when Coal later developed kidney failure, I experienced another profound loss.
Spirit had been lost to tumors and disease. Jack to heart failure. Coal to kidney failure.
Their lives and their illnesses were different, but each loss left me with the same fundamental question:
Can we do better for them?
Could we be more thoughtful about what we feed them, what we put on them, what we expose them to, how we care for them, and the choices we make on their behalf?
I couldn't change what had already happened to the animals I loved.
But I could learn from it.
And I could carry those lessons forward.
That became one of the driving forces behind everything that came next.
FROM CARING TO CREATING
My concern about what animals were eating eventually led me to take action.
In 2002, I created JnC Gourmet Pet Bakery & Baskets.
I developed recipes and products from the ground up, which required a deep understanding of ingredients, nutrition, potential allergens, sourcing, recipe construction, formulation, preparation, and production. I researched extensively, continually expanded my knowledge, and applied what I learned directly to the creation and development of each product.
And this wasn't something that stopped when the products were made. I continued researching, learning, testing, refining, and educating as the business evolved.
That experience also gave me a much deeper appreciation for how much consumers need—and deserve—to know about the products they give their animals.
Transparency matters. Honesty matters. Information matters.
People deserve to understand what they are buying, what they are feeding, what ingredients are being used, and why those choices matter.
And they shouldn't have to be an expert to get straightforward answers.
It was a very different time in pet food and ecommerce, but the underlying question was the same:
What are we actually giving our animals?
JnC gave me the opportunity to turn that question into something tangible.
It was an early expression of something that had been with me all along:
If I believed something could be better for animals, I wanted to do something about it.
A LIFETIME OF RESCUE
Rescue became another major part of my life.
For roughly two decades, I rescued, rehabilitated, fostered, provided hospice care, intervened when animals needed help, and helped animals find new homes—often Pugs, but not exclusively.
Sometimes that meant working independently to help an animal in need. Other times, it meant collaborating with rescue organizations I deeply respected, supported, and admired.
Every animal brought a different history.
Every animal needed something different.
And every one reinforced the same lesson: rescue isn't simply about changing an animal's circumstances.
It is about understanding the individual animal in front of you.
It is about patience, consistency, safety, medical care, rehabilitation, boundaries, trust, and compassion.
One example was Papa, a senior Pug pulled from the streets of Miami in very poor health who was receiving hospice care.
Animals like Papa taught me about comfort, dignity, patience, medical care, nurturing, and the importance of allowing an animal to feel safe—even when you cannot change everything that has happened to them.
Papa also taught me something I wish more people understood about senior animals.
Sometimes the relationship will be short. But short does not mean insignificant.
If you have room in your heart and your home, go to a shelter. Find that senior who may have been overlooked. Give them a place to land. Give them safety, love, care, comfort, and companionship for whatever time they have left.
No senior animal should have to face the end of their life alone, frightened, sick, or uncared for.
Be their champion.
Sometimes the greatest gift we can give an animal isn't more years. It's making the years they have left matter.
BEAU
Beau taught me that lesson differently.
He was only a few months old when I rescued him from a situation where he had been abused by a child. He needed a tremendous amount of one-on-one work, patience, and consistency to build his confidence and learn to trust.
Today, Beau has come a long way.
He trusts. He loves. He plays. He is confident in the life he knows.
But he has never forgotten.
And I don't expect him to.
I don't believe healing means pretending the past never happened.
Sometimes healing means learning that you are safe now.
You can't erase an animal's history, but you can help change what comes next.
And when an animal has experienced trauma, that responsibility becomes even greater. It means learning to recognize and respect their sensitivities and boundaries. It means understanding that behaviors, reactions, fears, and preferences may have a history behind them. It means protecting their sense of safety while giving them the patience and consistency they need to build trust.
Our animals depend on us to pay attention—to understand who they are, what they are telling us, and what they need from us.
That is a tremendous responsibility with any animal.
But for an animal carrying a history of fear, neglect, or abuse, it can mean everything.
LOOKING DEEPER
The more I learned, the more questions I had—and the more determined I became to find the answers.
My concern for individual animals grew into a broader curiosity about the systems behind their lives.
I wanted to understand where things came from, how they were produced, what ingredients were being used, how animals were raised and treated, and what happened long before a product ever reached a store shelf—or our homes.
That led me to explore the live-animal trade and pet-store industry, testing facilities, commercial and backyard breeding, and the ways animals are raised, handled, transported, and treated.
The deeper I looked, the further the questions took me.
That exploration eventually extended into industrial farming, agricultural and cultivation practices, ingredients, sourcing, and the broader systems behind what ultimately makes its way into our homes, into our bodies, and into our animals.
I became increasingly interested in what we were putting into our animals through food, supplements, and other products they ingest, as well as what we were putting onto them—from shampoos and grooming products to topical treatments and first-aid remedies. I also became more aware of the products and chemicals used in the environments around them, including everyday household products like air fresheners, floor cleaners, laundry detergents, and even toilet bowl cleaners.
And eventually, those questions brought me back to something I had already been learning through Coal and my experience developing pet food and treats:
What are we actually putting into our animals?
I began looking much more closely at ingredients, sourcing, production methods, organic and non-GMO practices, industrial agriculture, plant-based and vegan options, and ingredients and formulations that may not represent the kind of health and wellness I wanted for the animals in my care.
I learned that natural doesn't tell you everything. Neither does healthy. Neither does a beautiful package or a long list of impressive-sounding claims.
You have to look deeper. You have to ask questions. You have to understand what you're looking at. And sometimes, you have to be willing to question something you thought you understood.
For me, it was a string worth pulling, so I pulled.
I soon realized I wasn't pulling at a loose thread—I was pulling back a curtain. One question led to another. Every answer revealed something else I needed to understand. And the more I pulled, the more I saw what was happening behind it.
What I found was a world in which the lives and well-being of our animals were too often under-prioritized—from what they were fed, to the products used on and around them, to the healthcare and pharmaceuticals intended to care for them.
I began to see how much could be hidden behind labels, marketing, industry practices, and information that didn't always tell the whole story.
I needed to unravel it. To understand what was really happening beneath the surface. To identify what was being overlooked, expose what wasn't being clearly communicated, and bring important information into the light so people could make more informed choices for the animals who depend on them.
The more I learned, the more I understood that knowledge isn't enough if we keep it to ourselves.
We have to ask better questions. We have to look deeper. And we have to be willing to share what we learn.
And none of this happened in separate compartments.
I loved animals. I learned from them. I rescued them. I saw vulnerability and suffering. I became determined to understand why. I investigated the systems behind their lives. I learned about food, ingredients, production, agriculture, sourcing, wellness, and environmental factors.
Over time, I developed the experience and judgment to ask better questions.
And eventually, all of that became the foundation for Verity Pet™.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF TRUST
There is another part of my story that has shaped how I see animals, although I don't believe I need to share every detail of it to explain its impact.
I am a survivor of trauma, both as a young girl and later as an adult woman.
Those experiences gave me a lifelong sensitivity to vulnerability, safety, trust, and the profound responsibility that comes with having power over another living being.
Animals have always represented something deeply important to me:
Their innocence.
Their trust.
Their devotion.
And the safety they place in the people responsible for them.
When an animal comes into our life, we choose that responsibility.
They don't choose the home.
They don't choose the food.
They don't choose the environment, the treatment, or the person responsible for their care.
We do.
And I believe that responsibility should call something better from us—compassion, patience, respect, accountability, honesty, and integrity.
Caring for an animal isn't simply an act of kindness.
It is an obligation we voluntarily accept.
That belief has followed me through every chapter of my life with animals.
And it is one of the reasons Integrity isn't simply a word in the foundation of Verity Pet™.
It is a responsibility.
WHERE IT ALL CAME TOGETHER
My professional life developed alongside everything I was learning through animals.
I began working in food service at sixteen and eventually moved through restaurant ownership and management, kitchen operations, food preparation and production, sourcing, purchasing, inventory, sanitation, food safety, events, property operations, entrepreneurship, and building businesses from the ground up.
Along the way, I developed an approach that became central to everything I did:
Research. Learn. Understand. Apply. Refine. Keep learning.
Whether I was developing a recipe, selecting an ingredient, constructing a product, sourcing materials, evaluating production methods, or figuring out how something should ultimately reach a customer, I wanted to understand the reasoning behind the choice—not simply accept what someone else said was best.
Over the years, I developed an expansive understanding of food, ingredients, nutrition, formulation, sourcing, production, product development, animal care, and wellness through research, education, hands-on experience, and continued learning.
Those experiences taught me to look at the whole process.
Not just the finished product.
The ingredients. The sourcing. The production. The formulation. The handling. The quality. The purpose.
And what happens between an idea and the thing that ultimately reaches someone's home.
My life with animals gave me the questions.
My professional experience—and the years I spent researching, learning, testing, developing, and applying what I learned—gave me many of the tools to investigate them.
Eventually, all of those pieces converged.
There was no single moment when I decided to create Verity Pet™.
It was more like realizing that I had been building toward it for years without knowing its name.
WHY VERITY PET™
Verity Pet™ is the continuation of that journey.
It brings together a lifetime of loving animals, rescuing them, caring for them, learning from them, developing food and products for them, and asking better questions about how we can help them live well.
But Verity Pet™ isn't about perfection.
It's about being willing to look closer.
To question. To learn. To understand what we're buying, what we're feeding, what we're putting on our animals, and what those choices actually mean.
Our work is built around three pillars:
Fresh Food. Wellness. Grooming.
And underneath them are four principles that guide everything we do:
Truth. Wellness. Better Lives. Integrity.
The Verity Pet Standard™ is how those principles become part of what we do every day.
It means looking beyond the label.
Beyond the marketing.
Beyond what is simply popular.
We consider ingredients, formulation, purpose, quality, function, sourcing, production, usefulness, and the bigger picture of what a product brings into an animal's life.
We don't believe there is one perfect answer for every animal.
We do believe people deserve truthful information.
We believe animals deserve thoughtful care.
And we believe the responsibility we accept when we bring an animal into our lives deserves to be taken seriously.
FOR THE ANIMALS WHO STARTED IT ALL
Patches.
Ripples.
Spirit.
Kitty Boy.
Bruno.
Jack.
Coal.
Papa.
Beau.
And all the animals who came before, after, and in between.
Each one left something with me.
Some taught me about love.
Some taught me patience.
Some taught me grief.
Some taught me resilience.
Some taught me to look closer.
Some taught me how much trust an animal can give.
And some taught me that even after profound loss, there can still be another beginning.
Verity Pet™ is built from all of it.
From the animals.
From the questions.
From the losses.
From the lessons.
From the years of learning what happens when we care enough to look deeper.
