Pets have always been a part of Mika Wheelwright’s life. Her dad found the first family dog in the mountains one day, and from then on her life was never dog-free. Wheelwright ventured off to Barcelona, Spain, to earn her International MBA, not knowing that her degree would come in handy for the opportunity to start her own business. The Wheelwright family soon had a new member, Pledge, an adventurous Golden Retriever, who had fully immersed himself into the lives of his owners.
Everyone in Mika’s family had blown out a knee at some point during their outdoor adventures. Coincidentally, that meant that their dog, Pledge, wanted to join the family tradition of blowing out his knee too. Unfortunately, this led to Pledge being put on antibiotics and consequently becoming sick and weak from the drugs in his system that were supposed to help him. Worried about their four-legged family member, the family decided to try some probiotics. “We take probiotics when we’re sick, why not try some for the dog?” asked Wheelwright.
This little experiment eventually launched the business idea of creating a line of probiotics for sick or mildly unhealthy dogs. The business venture started out with six product lines and quickly jumped to twelve different products. Unlike other pet probiotic companies, Fidobiotics “specializes in probiotics. Everything we do is probiotic based. Good Guts is the strongest probiotic out there,” says Wheelwright. It contains 10 strains of probiotics, 2 prebiotics and 4 digestive enzymes. They even make products that help with anxiety, tooth decay/plaque and extreme immune system boosters that are comparable to Airborne for humans, she explains.
What really sets Fidobiotics apart from other companies is how much effort and passion the family puts into creating the best products. Probiotics are measured using CFUs, (Colony Forming Units) which measure how many live bacteria are in a probiotic. The pills made by Fidobiotics contain about 12 billion CFUs. “Other companies tend to have low CFUs,” Wheelwright says. Fidobiotics even takes the extra step in creating yummy flavors for pets like cheeseburger deluxe and coconut peanut butter.
Fidobiotics has plans to expand to more cities and states in order to help educate pet parents about the importance of pet health. In addition to geographical expansion, they are working on releasing their line of cat probiotics in May. People sometimes forget that having a happy, healthy pet takes more than just food and water.
“There are some amazing benefits to probiotics,” says Wheelwright. Fidobiotics is a big supporter of other local businesses as well, and customers can find their products in local pet shops in Murray and Ogden, in specialty pet boutiques, or online at their website.
