Biscuit Case

Her other job, says Karen Ogulnick '76, is director of electronic trading for New York Mercantile Exchange. In real life--four hours every night and all weekend these days--she's at her commercial-size oven baking Colby's Favorites premium dog biscuits, a venture she started in Demarest, N.J., in 1993. The biscuits came to market last March.
"I like to bake `people' things. I always did," said Ogulnick. She began making dog biscuits for Colby, the mutt she adopted in 1990 from the Bergen County Animal Shelter, where the dog had been abandoned in a dumpster. Chief taste-tester Colby (whose name, Ogulnick says, needs no explanation) gave the biscuits thumbs up, Colby's friends gobbled them down, and the hobby grew by leaps and bounds to the point that her loyal "customers" convinced Ogulnick to market the treats.
She spent more than a year researching canine nutritional needs, consulting with veterinarians and experimenting with ingredients because she didn't want to make a biscuit that tasted better but wasn't good for dogs. Laboratory testing and Department of Agriculture approval followed.
"We've done a lot of anecdotal tests. Put two kinds of biscuits on the floor, ninety-nine percent of the time a dog goes for mine," Ogulnick said. Unlike commercial dog biscuits, she says, "Mine have a strong smell, like food. There're no preservatives or chemicals. They're nutritional but smell fresh." The tell-tail test? "Shane is not a bone eater . . . but he devoured Colby's Favorites," "Misty stamped her feet for more," "Larsen would've snarfed down the entire bag," report the owners of satisfied dogs.
A German major who earned a Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Connecticut in 1981, Ogulnick started her company, Educated Guess, Inc., with a partner who had a master's degree. "We were educated and were taking a guess that this would work," she explained. But a property rental deal turned shady on them, their oven was held hostage, and they spent more on lawyers than the thing was worth. Before the oven was finally turned on after a year in storage and numerous health, fire and building inspections in the new "bakery," her partner bowed out. Now "we" means friends (including her former partner) pitching in. "We make it a party," Ogulnick said. "They get paid in dog biscuits."
She produces 20 one-pound bags a night of Colby's Favorites, a bone-shaped treat she makes in sizes small, medium and large. On weekends it's 40 bags. As a marketing twist during holidays, she adds special shapes of witches, pumpkins, turkeys, Santa Claus. Do the dogs really care? "That's for the people. I'm looking to run a successful business," Ogulnick said.
The enterprise is mostly word of mouth and strictly mail-order, but when Colby's Favorites takes off, she'll relocate the corporate offices of Educated Guess to her place near Rangeley, Maine, where she water skis and skis cross country and last fall won first prize in a local moose photo contest. Her goal, Ogulnick says, is to operate a business that does well and does good, too. Because she feels strongly about finding homes for unwanted cats and dogs, she contributes a percentage of the proceeds to local animal shelters.--Robert Gillespie