If you look closely enough around Glacier’s Goodies, you’ll find two different answers to the question of when we started.
The business officially dates back to 2023.
But if you followed us online, you’d probably swear we launched in 2025.
Both are true.
There was a lot of life packed into the two years between them, and for a long time I never really told the story of what was happening behind the scenes.
So, this is how Glacier’s Goodies actually began.
It Starts With My Dad
At the beginning of 2022, my dad was diagnosed with cancer.
My parents were living in Florida at the time. They had recently left the home and community they'd known for years, and my mom doesn't speak English. My dad had always handled almost everything for the two of them.
With him sick, I knew they needed to be closer to me.
I flew to Florida, packed them and what we could into a rental car, and drove them across the country to Washington. I found them a new place near me, painted walls, moved things around and tried to make an unfamiliar space feel a little more like home.
Suddenly, life looked very different.
As my dad became sicker, I took leave from my job and helped care for him during in-home hospice. I wasn't doing it alone, but food somehow became one of my parts.
His illness and medications had changed what he could comfortably eat, and despite everything he was going through, he still cared about eating in a way that made him feel as good as possible. So I researched. A lot.
I read about ingredients, nutrition and digestion. I experimented with smoothies and foods that worked around the restrictions he had at the time. I learned far more about food than I ever expected to.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I started making dog treats.
Something to Take My Mind Off Everything
I'm a designer and illustrator by trade, and outside of work I'd always been someone who painted, drew or made things.
But during that period, I didn't have much creative energy left. There was everything happening with my dad, and I was already spending my working hours using the creative part of my brain. Sitting down to paint or draw felt like more than I had in me.
Making dog treats was different.
It gave me something to do with my hands and something completely unrelated to think about for a little while. I could experiment, make something fun for Glacier, and give my brain a break from everything else going on.
And these were not practical dog treats.
I made small dog-friendly cannolis. Donuts. Cupcakes. Little desserts inspired by food made for humans.
They were completely unnecessary and incredibly time-consuming.
But that was kind of the point.
For a few hours, I could just make something fun.
Why Glacier’s Goodies Says 2023
In September 2023, I officially formed Glacier’s Goodies.
Looking back, I moved much faster on that part than the business itself was ready for.
I didn't have a finished product line. I didn't have retail-ready packaging. I certainly didn't have everything figured out.
But my dad was dying.
I think part of me wanted to make it real while he was still here. I wanted to be able to show him that I was building something.
He died the following month, in October 2023.
He never got to see Glacier’s Goodies become what it is today.
But the experience of caring for him had already changed the direction it would eventually take.
The Ingredients Followed Me Back Into the Kitchen
After my dad died, I was left with more than grief.
I also had a kitchen full of ingredients and all of this knowledge I'd picked up while researching food for him.
And I started wondering whether some of what I'd learned could influence the treats I was making for dogs.
Glacier had always had a sensitive stomach herself, so the idea immediately felt relevant to the dog sitting in front of me.
That was when my thinking began to shift.
Instead of asking How elaborate of a dog dessert can I make?, I became more interested in what could make sense as an everyday treat.
My ingredient research eventually introduced me to goat milk, and it became the foundation I wanted to build around.
The elaborate desserts gradually disappeared. For a while, I experimented with chocolate-bar-style dog treats divided into individual squares.
Then the bar disappeared too.
The little squares stayed.
Those eventually became the biscuits we make today.
And somewhere along the way, the idea behind Glacier’s Goodies became much clearer: gut-friendly goodies made for everyday life with your dog.
I Had the Idea. I Definitely Did Not Have the Timing.
My dad died on October 5, 2023.
There wasn't much time to process what had just happened. My mom had relied on my dad for nearly everything, and because she doesn't speak English, much of what comes after losing someone suddenly became mine to navigate too.
There was paperwork. Phone calls. Accounts to sort out. Decisions to make. A new life for my mom that neither of us had expected to be figuring out.
And I was grieving too.
There were other things happening in my family at the same time that made an already difficult period even heavier. By November, I felt like I was moving from one thing that needed me to the next.
Then, right before Thanksgiving, Glacier tore her CCL.
She needed TPLO surgery, a major orthopedic procedure followed by months of closely managed recovery.
So my world got even smaller.
I had gone back to work by then, and because I worked remotely, my office moved to the living room floor. Glacier wasn't supposed to run, jump or move around freely, so I worked beside her all day where I could constantly keep an eye on her. At night, we slept on an air mattress in the living room so we could stay close.
For the next four to six months, I barely left that spot.
Glacier’s Goodies wasn't exactly high on the list of things I had the capacity to build.
But eventually, she healed.
We were about a week away from the point when she should have been fully recovered when she tore the CCL in her other leg.
Another TPLO.
Another four to six months.
And because apparently the timing still wasn't quite difficult enough, her second surgery happened the day after a bomb cyclone knocked out power across much of the area east of Seattle.
The surgical center had backup power, so her surgery went ahead as planned.
We brought a freshly operated-on Glacier home to a house with no electricity.
And that's how round two began. 😂
We went right back to the living room floor and did the entire recovery over again.
If you're wondering why a business I officially formed in September 2023 seemed to go almost completely quiet until 2025, this is why.
Except It Wasn't Really on Pause
There wasn't much physical building happening during that period, but I had a lot of time to think.
I had spent my career as a professional designer, and sitting in one place beside Glacier for month after month gave my brain plenty of room to wander.
I thought about the treats. The packaging. What I wanted the brand to look like. What it could feel like.
And increasingly, I thought about what Glacier’s Goodies could eventually become beyond food.
I started sketching.
Some of those ideas sat in sketchbooks for a long time while I focused on getting the treat side of the business off the ground.
Others are only now beginning to make their way into the real world.
There’s a whole other story about Glacier’s surgeries, the enrichment world they introduced me to, and how that eventually collided with my design background.
But that's a story for another day.
Somewhere in There, I Had a Career Too
While all of this was happening, I was also trying to hold onto my career as a designer.
I was laid off in the summer of 2024.
Under different circumstances, maybe that would have felt like an opportunity for a reset. Instead, it was terrifying.
My life had changed dramatically over the previous year. I had taken on new responsibilities within my personal life, spent a significant amount on Glacier's two surgeries, and suddenly I didn't have a job.
The design job market wasn't exactly welcoming at the time, either.
So when my former manager reached out with an opportunity to join her at a different company, taking it felt like the responsible thing to do.
Unfortunately, it also brought me back into a work environment and dynamic I had been desperately hoping to leave behind.
I was miserable.
The job regularly consumed 60+ hours of my week. I was exhausted, applying to other jobs constantly, and trying to keep up with everything waiting for me outside of work.
And somewhere in the back of my mind was this business I'd registered over a year ago.
I started to feel like if I kept waiting for life to calm down, Glacier’s Goodies was never going to happen.
So in the summer of 2025, I decided to stop waiting.
The Second Launch
That's when Glacier's Goodies finally started moving.
Not because I suddenly had more time. I absolutely did not.
I was still working an exhausting full-time job, but I started putting whatever time and energy I could find into getting Glacier's Goodies out into the world.
In a lot of ways, summer 2025 was our real launch.
We began with a small assortment of biscuits in resealable treat bags. There were no little milk cartons yet. The product line was much smaller. I was still figuring out recipes, packaging, production and what this business could realistically become.
I started focusing heavily on wholesale and reaching out to independent pet shops. Orders began coming in. One retailer became another.
Slowly, Glacier's Goodies stopped feeling like the business I kept meaning to start and became the business I was actually running.
I was developing recipes, making treats, packing orders, talking to retailers and designing the brand—while still spending most of my week at my other job.
It was a lot. But for the first time in a long time, I could see a way forward.
Six Months to Make It Work
Then, in December 2025, the timing finally worked in my favor.
I landed a six-month design contract with Zillow.
On paper, it was another design job.
To me, it was an exit plan.
It gave me a way out of an environment that had taken a lot out of me, while still giving me the financial security of working in my career for another six months.
More importantly, it gave me a date.
For years, Glacier's Goodies had existed around everything else happening in my life. I'd work on it when I had time, when there wasn't another crisis, when work wasn't consuming me, when Glacier wasn't recovering from surgery.
There was always another when.
This time I knew exactly when my contract ended.
June 2026.
I decided that would also be the end of my design career—at least for the foreseeable future.
I had six months to keep building Glacier's Goodies while I still had a steady income, and then I was going all in.
So I did.
I worked my contract during the day and built Glacier's Goodies around it. I developed new products, refined recipes, redesigned packaging, grew wholesale, fulfilled orders and tried to put as many pieces in place as I could before June arrived.
For once, the deadline wasn't something happening to me.
It was one I'd chosen.
June 2026
When my contract ended, I kept the promise I'd made to myself.
I didn't start applying for another design job.
I went full time with Glacier's Goodies.
After spending years trying to fit the business into whatever scraps of time and energy were left after everything else, suddenly this was my job.
Of course, “full time” hasn't exactly meant leisurely days spent illustrating cartons and dreaming up dog treats.
I'm also manufacturing products, fulfilling orders, talking to retailers and reps, sourcing ingredients, managing wholesale, developing new products, updating the website and dealing with all the unglamorous things that come with running a product business.
But now I'm doing those things for something I'm building myself.
And after the road it took to get here, that means quite a lot.
Where We Are Now
Glacier’s Goodies looks almost nothing like the little business I registered in September 2023.
The cannolis are gone.
The chocolate bars had their moment.
The treat bags have been replaced.
The assortment has grown.
The brand itself is still growing too.
But when I look back, the pieces connect in a way I couldn't have seen while I was living through them.
Caring for my dad changed the way I thought about food and ingredients. Making treats gave me a creative outlet when I desperately needed one. Glacier's sensitive stomach gave that research somewhere to go. Her surgeries forced me to slow down, but also gave me time to imagine what this brand could eventually become. And my background in design has shaped nearly everything I've built around those ideas.
My dad didn't get to see Glacier’s Goodies become a real business.
I wish he had.
But in a strange way, he's part of the reason it exists at all.
And Glacier, of course, has managed to influence nearly every decision since.
We're still building the rest of the story.