The Pin Oaks Story

Born into a dog-loving family, I grew up beside dogs. Big dogs, small dogs, long dogs, hairy ones, short ones, itchy dogs, fast dogs, other peoples dogs, slow, noisy, silent and even very old dogs. And I loved it! 

I have always had a dog by my side, even when I traveled. In Scotland, I would intentionally distract dogs on their evening walks. Once I had their attention, I’d stroll, crawl or roll across to give them a big fat hello. It was normally at this point that I’d look up and see a bewildered Scot peering down at me from the other end of the lead. Needless to say, we soon got on famously and I ended up ‘baby-sitting’ their dogs, mainly black Scottish Terriers, often named “Angus”. 

One year I flew to Italy to take care of Sam, a Golden Retriever from New York who needed a ‘baby sitter’ while on his summer holiday in Tuscany. It was clear that being surrounded by and caring for dogs was always going to be a big part of my life. 

So, along with my mum, from whom I had inherited this shared passion, we found a wonderful smallholding. Here I would create great boarding kennels, a place for people like me to leave their dogs, a place that I’d be happy to leave my own dogs.  I now had 8 tree-filled acres to put into action what came naturally.

And so it began… 

As time passed, our experience and observations brought us much insight into dog care. Never comfortable with the processed foods our dogs were eating, we wanted to find a more natural approach. 

Driven by her passion my Mum spent her days researching and studying dog nutrition and feeding methods. She settled on the BARF diet by Dr. Ian Billinghurst and she soon started to make this raw diet for our own dogs. They were never healthier and we were never happier. 

Due to the successful results with our own dogs, it became the food of choice for our kennel guests too. Many of our kennel guests experienced improved condition during their stay as a result of eating our food. This led to continuous requests by their owners to take our food home when they collected their dogs.

So Pin Oaks Food was born.