Fetchstix in Yankee Magazine:
When we first heard about Fetchstix, the initial question that came to mind was: "Is this an example of Yankee ingenuity or a sign of the apocalypse?" Wagatha's, a small company in Manchester Center, Vermont, that produces organic dog biscuits, has started selling bundles of maple sticks as boutique dog toys for $12.95 a pop, and--we were shocked to discover--people are buying them. We took the question right to the source.
"It depends on the day," chuckles Norm Levitz, one of Wagatha's cofounders. 
"I don't think that it's a sign of the apocalypse yet," chimed in Neal Reilly, his business partner. "It's a trilogy. We have the sticks now. We're coming out with fall foliage in a can next year, and the following year we're going to do fresh Vermont air in a can."
We're pretty sure he was joking about the last two, but it's hard to tell. Norm and Neil keep their tongues so firmly in their cheeks that it would take minor surgery to remove them. Anna Dibble, a local artist and the third co-inventor, added to the cheekiness by creating a fully illustrated user's manual, included in every bundle, that explains (in painful detail) the correct way to throw a stick. It even has a technical support line, which is Anna's home number.
"I get two kinds of calls," she says. "They either call up late at night and are a little loaded and think it's hilarious, or they're people who say their dogs love the sticks, but they're worried about the toxicity. Are their dogs going to get sick from chewing on these sticks?" No, she explains calmly; they're sticks.
Over the last two years, Wagatha's has sold thousands of Fetchstix around the country. As you might expect, they don't do very well in Vermont, but sticks are rare commodities in a lot of places. "We sold a surprising number of these in Las Vegas," Norm explains. "They don't even have trees there."
Fetchstix are also wholesaled to distributors. One company's reps insisted on testing the product before placing their order, though it's unclear what they thought they might find. "It throws like a stick; it has bark like a stick," Norm jokes. "People have gotten so removed from anything natural for their animals. I think it throws them off."
"It's God's original dog toy," Neil says. "How do you get any better than a stick?" He pauses for a moment, then adds, quietly, "With instructions."
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The Brilliance of Dogs
Rainy night in Clarksville, Vermont
Mud season. Smell of skunk in the air. In Neil's open air sugar house, Neil, Norman, and Anna — in flannel shirts and jeans — hung out on recycled furniture watching the sap boil, sipping sap juleps, swapping dog jokes and ideas for their canine businesses.
Rob, an old blood hound, snored by the woodpile, head resting on the chainsaw. Cassie, a waggy golden retriever and Pepper, an eccentric black lab, tussled outside in the rain, taking delicious turns rolling in a dead woodchuck. Then the perpetual stick-chaser Radar suddenly turned up with a moose maple branch and nudged Norman's knee with her nose. Norman tossed the stick out into the dark and Radar happily ran to fetch it.
"Hey. Here’s a crazy thought,” said Anna as she poured a finger of Wild Turkey into her mug and topped it off with a ladle-full of steaming sap. "My friend Steven in New York says there's a real shortage of sticks for dogs in city parks."
Neil grabbed a strip of birch bark from the kindling pile, brandished a pencil, and the three friends began jabbering away about the values of real sticks.
Dogs bring out the dog in us.
Always listen to the dog
Links
www.wagathas.com
www.dibbledog.com
