It all began with bad breath.
Bad dog breath, to be exact — and the pup-friendly mints that Denverites Deb Dempsey and Tonya Payne created to solve this all-too-common problem more than two decades ago.
The mints, called Mouthfuls, were such a hit with local dog owners that Dempsey and Payne soon expanded into a full pet supply shop focused on natural, healthy foods for dogs. That storefront opened on Tennyson Street in 2005, and they’ve been selling high-quality canine essentials ever since.
Today, the shop is owned by Kaiti Asmussen, who honors the original owners’ mission while also finding new products to include in the store’s lineup. The most noteworthy offering has to be the shop's body part bar, an assortment of dried animal oddities that includes hairy pig ears, bison knuckles, and other livestock byproducts, many of which come from Colorado and Wyoming farms that process meat for human consumption.
“Everything is very well-raised, hormone free, that kind of thing,” Asmussen says. “So we try to source things that are very high quality and healthy, and not loaded with chemicals or medicines.”
While the body part bar may seem gruesome at first glance, Asmussen says that featuring unusual animal parts is meant to make pet-care more sustainable for the planet. “We have the opportunity to get those [parts] and keep them out of the landfill, which reduces greenhouse gases,” Asmussen says. “It's kind of nice to use that stuff that would normally get thrown away and contribute to the environmental problems that we're very obviously suffering here in Colorado.”
These dehydrated, baked, and freeze-dried animal parts are beneficial for dogs’ health because they support digestion, clean their teeth, and stick to simple ingredients that dogs would naturally have in the wild.
“It's also activating different parts of their brain, so it also wears them out, it calms them down, it gives them a sense of security because there's something to do with their mouth, which releases feel-good hormones as they're chewing and licking,” Asmussen says.
Asmussen’s pets, from left to right, Ziggy, Minnie, Cash, Cosmo, and Tulsi (Credit: Kaiti Asmussen)
A Space for Pets — and Their Humans
The original mints are no longer in production, but the shop itself has become a Denver staple. Asmussen credits Mouthfuls’ success to its neighborhood involvement.
“We focus on making sure that pets in need have what they want, we do a ton of donations every year, and we try really hard to get ourselves involved in community activities,” Asmussen says.
That includes the annual pet fashion contest that takes place in early summer, which they plan to announce soon. They also make pet owners’ lives easier through a free delivery program, available for anyone within 5 miles if they call ahead, and a punch card program that makes it easy to earn rewards.
Asmussen is always finding new ways to cater to customers. For instance, Mouthfuls recently expanded to create a new room just for feline food, treats, and toys — a renovation approved by Asmussen's own two cats, Minnie and Ziggy. She also has three dogs – Tulsi, Cosmo, and Cash – and while they each have their own favorites from the body part bar, they all agree on ears.
“Any ear goes down like butter,” Asmussen says. “They just love it.”
