Bark and Beau - How it all began...

I feel like I'm a bit late starting this blog, as we have already been in business for a few months, but only now do I feel like I have the time to dedicate to it and do it justice.

My name is Leanne, and I live in Cornwall with my husband, Leigh, and our energetic GSP, Miss Darcy. Darcy lives life at full speed, and is rarely ever still. In fact, she was the inspiration behind Bark and Beau... You may notice she is also the inspiration behind our brand logo :)

Darcy was a rescue puppy (but that's a story for another day) and she was a total ball of energy from the second she entered our lives. Not just the normal puppy levels of bounciness, but non stop chaos-causing tazmanian-devil style mayhem.

With time, patience and training, she did start to calm in most areas of life, but when trying to dry her off after a damp walk, she would revert back into the gremlin we were avoiding.

Drying her off was a two person activity/sport and it used to take one of us to hold her and one to dry her. She would try to grab the old bathtowel, and it turned into a wrestling match that she thought was a great game, but she was the only one having fun.

The whole experience of trying to dry her was not calm, not dignified and highly stressful for the humans. Darcy treated it like a game, but we didn't want to play. She hated having such a big heavy bathtowel on her, and would try to run off before she was dry, leaving a dirty paw print trail through the house. It was just chaos.

Until last year, I was a horse trainer, specialising in horses with behavioural issues and phobias, so I know how important it is to have calmness in order for animals to learn and be consistent in their behaviour. Getting calmness with Darcy was certainly a work in progress, but I knew I needed to find a product that help could remove some chaos during drying time.

I knew what I wanted; a drying towel with hand pockets so I could hold Darcy AND the towel at the same time, but I didn't find anything I thought would work for us. Instead, I found a manufacturer and had them made.

I didn't just stop at getting towels manufactured; I insisted each towel was supplied with its own bag, because I didn't want damp, dirty towels in the boot of my car. That way, we can try to keep the car a bit cleaner, and put both the towel and the bag in the wash when we get home. And so, the Bark and Beau Drying Kit was born!

I'm particularly fussy about quality, so it took a few samples before I was happy that we were making a product that would be able to withstand the rigorous use that dog towels get, but also I wanted to make sure it was a product that customers would be prepared to pay for. It needed to be fit for purpose, and not just seen as a pricey 'dog towel'. It needed to be great quality and worth paying for.

You see, I am also fussy about the colour we chose. Human towels are normally a light colour, and rarely stay the same colour when used on a dog, even after they are washed (this will be explained in another post!). The first colour of towel I launched was grey; ideal because it doesn't show every speck of mud and dirt when drying a dog! Customers loved the grey, but asked for more colours, so less than two months later,and only having made a handful of sales, I released black and lilac towels too. A massive investment, and a huge risk for me personally, but I believe in our product so much that it was a risk I'm glad I took.

Our aim is to help active dog owners add some calmness into their dog drying routine, and I wish I had released this product sooner. Honestly, the hand pockets were a game-changer for us, and since we launched, our customers agree! No more big heavy (smelly) human towels, no more wresting the dog...just a calmer experience for all of us.

We can't make dogs enjoy bath-time, but we can make drying them a calmer experience for dog and human.

So, that's a little bit of background about why Bark and Beau exists, and I have plenty more posts to write in the next few weeks!

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings.

Leanne x

Leanne and Darcy sitting on the grass with a Lilac Drying towel being used