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Mom, Maker, Animal Lover
Nicole Toulany grew up around animals. She worked at Global Pet Foods, trained in dog grooming, and spent years helping her husband Kamil run Toulany's Pizza in Chezzetcook before their first son arrived in 2015. None of that felt like a straight line at the time. Looking back, it was all pointing at the same thing.
What she brought into this business is a specific kind of attention — the kind that comes from years of watching animals tell you what they need without words. She reads a dog's reaction to a treat the way a baker reads a loaf coming out of the oven. Not with data. With familiarity.
Her approach to what goes into each product is non-negotiable. Short ingredient lists. Oat flour over conventional flour. Organic coconut flour when grain-free is required. Paw Balm ingredients she'd put on her own skin. The lip balm (Simply Made Lip Balm) was a customer's idea, born when someone admitted she'd been using the dog balm on herself for a year. Nicole didn't argue. She just made a version for people too.
She is still figuring out the time management. Three boys, a household, local markets, four retail stockists, and every batch made by her hands. There is no system that makes this effortless. She works in whatever margin is available, and she is honest about the fact that some days the margin is very small.
What steadies her is Nessie the Boston Terrier, Chupa the recently rescued puppy, and Mila and Toto, the brother-and-sister cats who arrived later. They are the ongoing reason the work feels worthwhile. Roxy and Kobe started this. The ones here now carry it forward.
Baked at Home, Built with Purpose
Simple ingredients, nothing to hide
Pumpkin Peanut Butter Bites are baked with oat flour, no white flour or whole wheat and rely entirely on what the name lists: pumpkin, peanut butter, and nothing added to bulk them up. When grain-free is needed, Nicole switches to organic coconut flour. The ingredient list is short enough to read at a glance, which is precisely the point.
These were one of Nicole's first two recipes, developed in her kitchen for Roxy and Kobe before they ever became a product. She wasn't trying to make something sellable. She was trying to make something she could trust. The fact that it became her bestseller is less a surprise than a confirmation: animals respond to real food.
Dog owners at Nicole's market table often ask what's in them before they buy. When she reads the list aloud, they stop asking questions and reach for a bag. That's the usual sequence.
Apple Carrot Bites are the quieter of Nicole's two original recipes — no nut butter, no strong aroma, just the natural sweetness of apple and carrot baked into a small, clean treat. Same oat flour base, same short ingredient list, same absence of fillers or preservatives.
They were developed alongside the Pumpkin Peanut Butter Bites from the start — a gentler option for dogs with more sensitive palates or stricter dietary needs. Nicole wanted a range, even at the beginning, because she knew from her own dogs that one treat doesn't suit every animal.
The dogs who come back for these tend to be the quieter ones too, according to Nicole — the older dogs, the picky ones, the ones whose owners have spent years reading labels. Their owners know what they're looking for, and Apple Carrot Bites deliver it without argument.
A Heartfelt Note
When I started baking for Roxy and Kobe, I wasn't thinking about a business. I was thinking about two dogs I loved who couldn't tolerate most of what was on the store shelf. I wanted to know exactly what they were eating. That feeling of the need to know what's going into something before you give it to an animal you're responsible for, is still what drives every batch I make.
If you've ever stood in a pet food aisle reading labels and felt vaguely uneasy, I understand that feeling. It's why every treat I make has a short ingredient list. It's why I use oat flour instead of filler flours, why I go coconut flour when grain-free is needed, why the Paw Balm has only ingredients I'd be comfortable putting on my own skin (and it turns out, others feel the same — the lip balm was a customer's idea, not mine).
Building this business while being home for my boys has required more creativity with time than I expected. There are days when the house isn't as tidy as I'd like, when a market gets cancelled, when I wonder how much further I can stretch one evening. What keeps me going is knowing that part of what I make goes directly to animals in rescue — animals that don't have a Nicole coming home to them yet. That matters to me more than I can fully explain.
Roxy and Kobe aren't here anymore. But this business started for them, and I keep building it in their name. If you pick up a bag of Paw Bites, you're part of that. You're feeding your dog or your cat something made with intention, and you're helping an animal somewhere else find a home. That's not a marketing line. That's just what happens when you buy a bag.
Thank you for being here, for coming back to the market table, for the questions and the photos of your dogs mid-treat. They mean more than you know.
— Nicole, Simply Baked Paw Bites
