My guest, Brendan McCarthy, is the operations manager and one of four founders of Doggy Style. Brendan’s company sells their own line of pet care products. What separates retail dog grooming products from Doggy Style products is the quality and uniqueness of the natural ingredients. Most of the ingredients are plant based.

Work experience

Before Brendan formed his own company, he worked for Park Ohio Industries in Cleveland. He ran their operations for 12 years by revitalizing local companies that were run down and needed improvements. This experience led to his next job working in operations, quality control and sales for Blue Buffalo, the #1 - selling pet food brand. They were one of the first national companies with an all-natural ingredients dog food.

Blue Buffalo is a family run business that started in 2003. When the family’s Airedale, named Blue, was diagnosed with cancer, they started looking into giving him the best quality food possible. What a motivator to create their own all natural food with quality ingredients!

The founding members of Doggy Style are Brendan, his brother, his cousin, and a good friend from the Blue Buffalo family. They were talking one day about creating shampoo for dogs. They noticed that it was hard to find a good dog shampoo, especially one with natural ingredients. Brendan was intrigued by this concept since one of his dogs was plagued with itchy, irritated skin. The shampoo he was using could have contributed to that.

One of the team members was in the ingredients business. He had knowledge and exposure to plant-based products for humans. The four compadres all loved dogs and thought it would be innovative to invent a recipe for a shampoo. They wanted their product to be good not just for the dog, but for the pet parents and their home/environment. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were to become a team and create a whole line of pet products.

Doggy Style Shampoo

Brendan remembers the day they all got serious in creating an all natural dog shampoo. It was August 23, 2023. Some ingredients they wanted to include were coconut oil, olive oil, and natural soaps. It was important to them that the remaining ingredients were all natural and plant-based.

Doggy Style shampoo is both a hypoallergenic shampoo and conditioner. It only takes a little shampoo to produce a lot of suds. The best way to apply it is putting a little bit on one of their massaging brushes and gently rubbing it into the dog’s fur.

In order to make a shampoo, an elastomer is required. Most elastomers are man-made and silicone based. Doggy Style shampoo uses an all-natural elastomer called Gransense, which has only been on the market for approximately 5 years. It binds the other ingredients in the shampoo with different oils to produce a moisturizer type feel to the shampoo. This benefits the dog by making their fur stay soft for days and weeks.

The other plant based ingredient is Sage Balance. It has antioxidant and antimicrobial properties. It is also anti-odor and anti-dander. The antimicrobial agents destroy microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses and fungi that can cause itchy skin. Doggy Style shampoo is the only shampoo on the market with both Gransense and Sage Balance.

Doggy Style shampoo doesn’t claim to be a whitening shampoo. However, it does whiten dog’s fur because it removes the unnecessary oils and returns them back to their natural pure color. I refer you to my previous podcast dated 10/14/25 about grooming with Sharyn Ugan, a dog should not be fully bathed every day or every week. Once a month is adequate. Bathing too often can strip the natural oils in a dog’s coat.

If it is necessary to bathe your dog more often, using Doggy Style shampoo is much safer than other shampoos on the market due to the natural ingredients. It is based off a baby formula, so you could bathe your dog twice a week and it wouldn’t hurt. It would actually help in the case of hot spots or itchy skin. Brendan recommends a couple of baths within the first week of the onset of skin irritation. The itching will most likely disappear unless an internal problem exists, such as allergies or other conditions. Please seek the advice of a veterinarian to identify the root problem.

Deodorizer Spray

If there is a need to freshen up your dog’s fur or just make it smell better, Doggy Style makes a deodorizer spray that also acts as a conditioner. This is a top seller for Doggy Style. Brendan suggests carrying a bottle in the car and having one on hand in the house. Sometimes I feel the need to freshen up my dog in between baths. This spritz smells very fresh and pleasant. Brendan suggests to spritz a little on your wrist to smell it first to see if you like it. After all, it is you who will be smelling it the most!

Doggy Style chose Grant Industries as one of their main suppliers. Grant Industries is a leading global provider to the personal care and beauty industry. They pride themselves in providing materials that are safe for consumers. One of their products is essential oils which are derived from plants and contain aromatic compounds. Brendan’s team tried many different ones until everyone agreed on The Ocean. This is what makes their shampoo and spritzer so pleasant. The scent is for the humans, of course. Dogs can roll in dirty diapers and be happy, but their pet parents won’t be!

Paw Protector

Another great product that Doggy Style sells is a paw protector. This product can protect paws from cracking, bleeding and getting chapped from very cold, dry temperatures. Exposure to snow, salt, ice, and chemical de-icers can irritate the pads and become problematic. The best time to apply the paw protector is right before heading out for your daily walk. It is also advisable to wash and wipe off the pads when returning home from the walk. If there are any injuries or small fissures, apply some more protector to the pads. The same product that protects, also heals.

Many pet parents may not use paw protector because they are concerned it is not safe for their dogs if they lick their paws. However, Doggy Style’s paw protector is lick safe and will not cause any stomach upset if ingested. There is actually some charcoal in the product to deter the dogs from licking it. After all, you don’t want to make it so appealing that the dog enjoys licking it and negates the whole reason you are applying it in the first place!

The variety of oils: coconut, olive, sunflower seed and sweet almond, combined with the sage balance is what produces the healing properties of the paw protector. It can also be used to heal hot spots, dry spots, and even can be used on their nose and crusty elbows. It is soft enough to scoop easily and apply just the right amount.

Scrub Brushes and Regular Brushes

As mentioned above, the best way to apply Doggy Style shampoo is with a scrub brush pictured below. A little bit can go a long way. The scrub brush also helps spread the shampoo more evenly. The shampoo is thicker than most dog shampoos, so squeezing it out directly on the dog makes it more difficult to spread around.

Personally, I love the scrub brush better than scrubbing my dog’s fur with my fingers, especially around the back end! It acts as a massager too. Just as a massage feels good for us, the scrub brush can act as a massager as well. Brendan’s dog Maggie isn’t a fan of baths but she perks right up when she sees the scrub brush.

The scrub brushes come in two different sizes. The smaller one is for short fur and smaller dogs. The bigger one has longer bristles and can cover more territory for larger dogs. Both the scrub brushes and the regular brushes are made out of bamboo and are tightly sealed with high quality silicone. This prevents mold from forming. Bamboo is durable and water resistant but is not waterproof. It is advisable not to expose it to prolonged moisture.

Towel

Doggy Style also makes a 20”X40” towel for drying the dog off. It is 87% cotton and 13% charcoal fused rayon. When you dry your dog, the charcoal pulls any odors and oxidants out of the skin and fur. The charcoal is activated by the heat from the friction of drying the dog off. The charcoal is good for the life of the towel. Putting it through a wash cycle and then in the dryer will not degrade the effectiveness of the charcoal.

Doggy Style is currently working on a larger version of the towel. It will be the size of a bath towel - great for larger dogs. They are also working on developing all natural disposable paw wipes - great for spot cleaning dirty paws.

How Doggy Style Got Its Name

Doggy Style strives to keep as much of their products manufactured first in Ohio (as close as New Albany) and then within the United States. However, they had to source out the cap of the shampoo overseas in order to get the green color they wanted. So much more goes into not just developing the product but also finding a company to manufacture the container it is sold in.

Now that the team had a specialty product available to market, they needed to come up with a name. Brendan’s brother Dan interviewed over 500 people in Washington, D.C. where he lives. He asked people walking with dogs 6 questions about grooming their dogs. He asked questions about where and how often they bathe their dogs. He also asked what shampoo they use or what their groomers use and if they would prefer an all natural dog shampoo. Some people knew the name of the shampoo they used but many did not. That’s when he decided that the name of their shampoo had to be catchy and memorable. Doggy Style achieves that! Every dog has their own style!

Doggy Style Logo

Doggy Style found an exceptional Cleveland based brand company called New Baum. Brendan and his team wanted their own dogs to be part of the logo. Instead, they compromised and chose an Irish Wolfhound because of their heritage. Irish Wolfhounds are huge dogs with huge character. It just fit their Doggy Style image. When Brendan is exhibiting his products at a convention, inevitably people with Wolfhounds will come up and approach him.

Where to buy Doggy Style Products

Doggy Style products are sold first and foremost on their website. They are also sold in over 60 stores in the Cleveland area, the east coast, and in Florida. Some of the stores where they can be found locally are Pets General in Lakewood, Lake Road Market in Rocky River, and Pet-Tique in Cleveland. They are looking to expand in other retail stores that sell all natural products. When ordering products via the Doggy Style website, enter the discount code: 10_OFF_WELCOME to receive 10% off your first order.

I highly recommend and use all of the Doggy Style products. I take Ebi to Pet Supplies Plus to bathe her. In my opinion, they have the best self-serve pet wash in town. Their state of the art bathing station at their Fairview Park store includes an operator friendly dial to control a rinse, shampoo, and conditioner cycle. You can also bring your own shampoo. They provide plenty of towels and an apron so you don’t get soaked when your dog decides to shake off excess water! After the final rinse, there is an attachment for drying your dog.

I started using Doggy Style products last summer and was hooked after the first time. Ebi’s fur stays soft and looks so shiny and healthy for at least a week after her bath. In between baths, I use the spritz to freshen up the typical dog smell. She doesn’t care for it when I spray the deodorizer spray directly on her fur, so I spray a some on the brush and brush her out. She still tries to rub it off on the floor unless I immediately put her leash on and we go for a walk.

The all natural ingredients in Doggy Style products resonates with my holistic approach to nutrition and wellness treatments for pets. In the near future, I will have a podcast dedicated to this subject. After all, we are what we eat and the environment around us has an impact on our health and well being.

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