Spotted Dog Barkery: Treats for Your Best Friend

Donna Leffler was doing errands in downtown Emmaus one day in late January,
when she couldn’t resist the scent coming from a little store at 338 Main
Street.

Was it some sort of German bakery making a delicious black forest cake? No.

A rhubarb pie? No.

Was she drawn inside to get her kids some yummy sand tarts? Nope.

The odor was coming from the Spotted Dog Barkery, which doesn’t even have a
license to sell human food.

“I was next door and smelled it,” Leffler admitted. “I’ve been in here two
or three times before, but back then I didn’t have a puppy. Now I have a
nine-month-old shepherd.”

So she bought one of the 18 special treats on display for her puppy that
range from $1 for bark-b-cue ribs to $6 for a mastiff. And she went home to
surprise her pup.

Leffler isn’t the only person who can’t resist the smell of baked puppy
treats in the afternoon in downtown Emmaus. Nancy Keller has made a living
out of them.

“We call them sniffers,” Keller said in a recent tour of her Spotted Dog
Barkery. “People come in here asking about the smell. It’s the carob in
what we cook.

“We have no license to sell food to humans. But every time I made a
birthday cake the pet owners try it. It doesn’t hurt them.”

The Spotted Dog Barkery business was started by Keller and her daughter,
Kim Quier, at their home in 2004. It opened in its Emmaus location three
years later, with a short and unsuccessful stay at a second location in
Boyertown.

“We thought Boyertown would pull people from the Philly area, but it
didn’t,” Keller said. “Emmaus is much bigger.”

Many of the recipes were found on the Internet.  Harley, Quier’s harlequin
Great Dane, is the model for their logo.

Their only store now attracts about 100 customers, -- or about 1,000 treats
-- per month, Keller said.

Keller pointed to a box of Milk Bone biscuits, saying the nutrients aren’t
as good as she bakes for dogs.

A 10-inch birthday cake, by the way, costs $20. It is made of peanut
butter, carob, vanilla, cream cheese, yogurt or peanut butter frosting.
It’s shaped like a big bone.

(No chocolate, which is dangerous to dogs.)

Treats such as the $4 Newfie are big sellers because they contain peanut
butter, a dog favorite. Not so favorite are the $1 treats made of mint
parsley, which are good for a dog’s breath, Keller said.

Keller now handles the retail business to herself. She’s experienced behind
the counter, having worked in the meat department of various Food Lane
locations for 34 years before it went out of business.

“I graduated from Emmaus High School in 1965, and I do have people come in
a remember me,” she said. “But after being at Food Lane for so long, I
swore I would never deal with the public again. I was lucky when they
closed, because I was able to collect a pension.

“For a while, I worked at a cleaning job. Next thing I knew, I was almost
working 35 hours per week cleaning.  When this business came up I was still
doing cleaning. So I decided I couldn’t do two jobs.”

She picked the Barkery.

Among her accomplishments in Emmaus has been giving out free treats to the
80-some dogs that take part in the Rotary Dog Walk fundraiser each spring.

The Barkery is open 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. Saturday it
is open 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. It’s closed on Sunday and Monday.

With those hours, Keller and husband, Jim, no longer keep a pet.

“I had dogs earlier in my life -- a collie, a yellow Labrador and a
Keeshond,” she said. “We know how they loved their treats.”