Baked treats for Fido

CANINE TREATS: Owner Marni MacLean-Karro makes and decorates cakes and other treats for dogs at Jack's Snacks, A Dog Bakery, which she established 12 years ago in Warwick. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
CANINE TREATS: Owner Marni MacLean-Karro makes and decorates cakes and other treats for dogs at Jack's Snacks, A Dog Bakery, which she established 12 years ago in Warwick. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Marni Maclean-Karro knew when she opened her baked dog-treats business that Rhode Island pet lovers would spend disposable income on her wholesome treats.

What she didn’t realize was how much she’d enjoy creating cakes and pastries that satisfied this desire to pamper the most reliably affectionate, loyal members of our families.

The dog biscuits she baked, starting in 2004, gradually gave way to a full range of treats and baked goods. Along the way her business, Jack’s Snacks, A Dog Bakery, moved from her kitchen, to shared space in Cranston, to a standalone retail store in Warwick.

MacLean-Karro now employs two additional workers to keep pace with demand. At Thanksgiving, she cooked more than 200 mini-pumpkin pies for pups.

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The bulk of her business is more celebratory. Rhode Islanders love their dogs so much, they celebrate their birthdays with individualized cakes. The cakes MacLean-Karro creates are made with human-grade ingredients, sans sugar and salt and other additives that dogs should go without.

The most popular selection – a single-layer, bone-shaped cake, frosted with cream cheese and peanut butter, or various other natural combinations – is then hand-decorated with a birthday message. The business Facebook page shows photo after photo of dogs and their cakes. Some wear little birthday hats or ribbons. Some are shown sniffing the cake.

The cakes are safe for people, but not terribly tasty. “If a human takes a bite, they probably think: She could do a lot better. When a dog takes a bite, between the taste and the smell, they just love it.”

The creativity expands to individualized creations, including a cake that will resemble a dog’s face, or one that shows a puppy with rump up, an invitation to play.

She’s made wedding-sized cakes, ones that resemble dog bowls filled with treats, and spherical cakes decorated as tennis balls. For the Pawtucket Red Sox Bark in the Park, she created a stacked cake with an image of mascot Paws.

“I envisioned making a lot of bone-shaped cakes,” she said, recently, of her start as a cake maker. “I did not envision the specialty cakes. However, it’s what I love doing the most.”

The business started with a single comment made by her husband one night as she fed their dog, Jack, some dog treats they’d purchased at a farmer’s market.

At home her husband observed: “You love dogs. You love baking. You should start making dog biscuits and sell them.”

“That was my lightbulb moment,” she said.

The dog that inspired her early baking, Jack, died two years after the business opened. MacLean-Karro believes he died after ingesting tainted dog food. The food he had been eating was later recalled, she said. The experience left her committed to making sure she only sells what is healthy for dogs.

“It made it more important to know where your ingredients come from,” she said. •

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