Welcome back to Inc.’s 1 Smart Business Story! Today we’re looking at how, for years, wellness entrepreneurs chased healthier humans with supplements, fitness apps, and personalized nutrition plans. Now a fast-growing group of founders is targeting a different customer: the family dog.

Americans spent $158 billion on pets in 2025, and most owners increasingly view their animals as family members rather than companions. That emotional shift is creating demand for everything from preventive health benefits and specialty foods to bone broth, behavioral therapy, and physical rehabilitation, Inc. contributor Lisa Bonos reported.

Many of the companies riding the trend were born from personal frustration. Christie Horvath discovered how valuable pet insurance could be after her dog Denver developed a brain tumor, so she launched pet insurance company Wagmo. Similarly, dog food companies Bundle x Joy and Brutus Broth were founded because pet owners want to give their own pets needed better nutrition options. All three companies were on this year’s Inc. 5000 list for their impressive growth over the past three years. This wellness trend is likely to only get bigger as pets cement their place as a fixture in the American household.

In this story you’ll discover:

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A pack of fast-growing companies is pampering pets with specialty foods and health services.

BY LISA BONOS

One night in 2017, Christie Horvath woke up to find her border collie-boxer mix, Denver, twitching and grunting. “He fell off the bed, which was horrifying,” Horvath says of her beloved four-year-old dog. She rushed Denver to an animal hospital emergency room, and after seeing a canine neurologist, Horvath learned that Denver had an inoperable tumor at the base of his skull that was causing seizures.

At the time, Horvath, who had previously worked on BlackRock’s insurance team, was attending Harvard Business School. She was able to afford the thousands of dollars in vet bills, she says, only because she had pet health insurance. She had heard from other animal lovers who thought pet insurance was a waste of money, because policies covered accidents and illnesses but not preventive care, such as annual checkups and vaccinations. That nudged Horvath to launch Wagmo (No. 930) in 2018. The New York City-based company offers pet health care benefits, plus discounts on pet products and services. It has quadrupled in size over the past three years, generating nearly $15 million in revenue in 2025.

Wagmo is part of a pack of fast-growing pet-wellness companies, a sector that includes everything from specialty pet foods to coverage for acupuncture, physical therapy, and behavioral training. According to the American Pet Products Association, 71 percent of American households owned at least one pet in 2025. (As of last year, 53 percent had a dog and 39 percent owned a cat.) Spending on pets reached $158 billion in 2025, a number expected to rise.

People increasingly view pets as important to their own well-being. The APPA report found that the vast majority of pet owners derive happiness and emotional support, and say they are less stressed, because they have an animal at home.

And people’s attention to their own wellness is filtering down to how they care for their four-legged dependents, Horvath and other entrepreneurs in this category say. “The more you think of your pet as part of your family,” says Horvath, “the more you’re going to do to make sure that they live long, healthy, happy lives.”

Several pet-wellness founders landed on their business ideas while searching for a solution to a pet’s health challenges. When Winston, a Great Dane, had skin and digestive issues, his vet recommended allergy shots that would’ve cost $200 to $300 a month. “There’s got to be something different,” Jessica Berger thought at the time. She put Winston on an elimination diet, a route some humans take when facing dietary issues. “When I did not give him chicken, grains, and added probiotics, he was a totally different dog,” Berger says. “So many dogs are allergic to chicken and don’t know it.”

Berger was arguably a world-class expert on pet food—at the time, she was the natural dog food buyer at PetSmart—but even she couldn’t find a poultry-free option. “Chicken and chicken fat are hidden in a lot of ingredients, a lot of products,” she says.

So Berger created her own line of supplements, food, and treats—more than 80 percent of which are poultry-free. Bored with the basic packaging she saw in the pet-food aisle, Berger browsed Sephora and Ulta for inspiration while conceiving her company, Bundle x Joy (No. 170). “What if we could create something that, visually, you would keep on the counter alongside your personal human supplements?” Berger wondered. Bundle x Joy’s packaging, with purples, pinks, and yellows, is a rainbow-hued contrast to the blue-and-brown your-dog-is-a-wolf packaging she sold for years at PetSmart.

Winston died a month before Bundle x Joy launched, though Berger now has her sibling Great Danes, Luna and Sol, by her side. And while the Phoenix-based company, which has grown 20-fold in the past three years, is now thriving, it hasn’t always been a walk in the park. Last year, as Bundle x Joy was gearing up to put its dog toys into thousands of Walmarts across the U.S., the company was hit with a devastating $200,000 tariff. For businesses like hers, Berger says, operating capital “is always very tight.” While Walmart absorbed some of the additional costs associated with dog toys manufactured in China, Bundle x Joy is still awaiting a tariff refund.

Still, Berger thinks the pet-wellness category will continue to grow in part because of an acute vet shortage. The U.S. is expected to have a shortfall of up to 24,000 companion-animal veterinarians by 2030, according to Mars Veterinary Health, the largest global provider of veterinary care.

As a result, Berger says, pet health care is becoming more do-it-yourself. “If we think about a vet shortage and people having to sort of manage their pets’ wellness a little bit more at home, collective care is going to become even more important over time,” she says.

Cost concerns are also a factor. According to a 2025 report from MetLife Pet Insurance, 70 percent of U.S. pet owners have delayed or skipped a vet visit because of the cost of care. Rather than going straight to the vet, more than half of pet parents will try a home remedy, the report’s research found.

Sue Delegan is one of those owners with a do-it-yourself approach. Twice, she nursed her rescue mix, Brutus, back to health. When Delegan and her husband first adopted the dog in 2005, he suffered from mange, a skin disease. Delegan started making bone broth for Brutus, as her mother had done for her and her siblings when they were growing up. Soon Brutus looked so healthy people assumed she had a new pet. “No, this is the same dog,” she told them.

About seven years later, Brutus went into liver failure after eating contaminated kibble. Delegan again gave Brutus bone broth and he had a full recovery. Some other dogs that ate the kibble didn’t make it, she claims. “That was a huge indicator for me,” Delegan says of the healing power of bone broth.

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