Why Blood Belongs in Your Dog's (and Cat's) Bowl

Here is a sentence I never expected to write for a living: your dog is probably missing blood.

Not a medical emergency, relax. I mean the food. Wild canines and felines eat prey, and prey comes with blood. Kibble has none. Most raw feeders assume muscle meat covers it. It doesn't. And I'd been quietly working this into my ReWild Your Pet's Diet program for a while, next to fur, feathers, and the other things nature packs into a meal that our pets almost never see in a modern bowl.

So I was thrilled to track down Geoff Bowers, founder of Totoniks, at SuperZoo. If you've listened to my earlier conversation with Geoff, you know why I use his venison blood toppers every day with my own animals. This time he came with news: a new line called Blood Buds, a cat formula on the way, and a straight answer about the maltodextrin on his current label. 

Listen to the full episode here.

What blood actually is (and why it's nothing like red meat)

Geoff's description is simple and I love it: blood is the elixir of life. Every mammal has it, and it is what carries vitamins, minerals, protein, and oxygen to every cell. In his words, "nature gets it right, humans break it."

The biggest myth he busted is the one I hear from clients constantly: "My dog eats raw meat, so she's getting blood." She isn't. The red in a steak is a muscle pigment called myoglobin, and it carries heme iron, which is real and useful. But Geoff's point is that it's a sliver of what whole blood contains, roughly five percent by his estimate. If you want what blood does, you have to feed blood.

So what does that look like? Here's the full list of what he walked through.

Protein, and a lot of it. Protein builds every living cell in the body, and Geoff's products run 60 percent protein and up. He also made a point I agree with: the older we get, the more protein we need, not less, and blood delivers it in a liquid, highly bioavailable form. Geoff's take is that absorption starts in the mouth when it's rehydrated, which is why owners often report fast changes in appetite and energy.

IGF-1. Insulin-like growth factor 1 is a growth signal that's abundant in young animals and declines with age. Geoff chose venison blood because deer maintain high levels as they age, for the sake of antler growth. Totoniks describes venison blood as a naturally rich source of it. I'll be straight with you: this is Geoff's and the company's position, and the published research I can point you to is on blood plasma (more on that below).

The micronutrient package. Vitamin D, the B vitamins, calcium, phosphorus, iron. Geoff's argument is that every nutrient the animal needs is carried in blood, in the form the body already recognizes. Compare that to many synthetic vitamin and mineral premixes. As he put it, minerals in those premixes often start as crushed rock, and when a nutrient arrives in its natural format, the body can decide to use it or send it out. That "use it or lose it" logic is the heart of why I like food-form nutrition.

Vitamin D deserves its own line. Dogs and cats can't make meaningful vitamin D from sunlight the way we do. A 1994 study found their skin has too little of the precursor, and what's there isn't converted well (How et al., 1994). That means they live or die by dietary vitamin D. Blood is a whole-food source in a form they evolved to eat. For anyone who's nervous about overdoing synthetic vitamin D, that matters. (My usual caveat: I'm not giving a dosing recommendation here. Geoff and I are talking about the principle.)

Hydration. Blood's naturally liquid, and Totoniks is designed to be rehydrated before feeding. That's a big deal for dry-fed dogs, and an even bigger deal for cats, who evolved to get most of their water from prey. Geoff pointed out that cats on dry food are suffering for it, from urinary problems on down.

Palatability. Dogs go bananas for it. For fussy eaters and seniors who've lost their sense of smell, that's not a gimmick, it's the whole ballgame. Anyone who has ever had (or currently has) an older dog or cat, you know that getting them to eat anything will sometimes make your whole week. 

Gut and immune support. Geoff's company points to a body of research on blood plasma, the liquid portion of blood. A 2025 study in the Journal of Animal Science fed adult beagles spray-dried plasma and found higher fecal IgA (an immune marker) at the highest dose and lower blood urea nitrogen (Mioto et al.). Two caveats worth knowing: it was a small study (12 dogs), and the plasma supplier co-sponsored it. It also used pork plasma, not whole venison blood. Totoniks lists more studies on its own blog. The research looks very promising.

Less waste. Geoff's blood comes from animals fit for human consumption in New Zealand, and the company says it is a by-product that often ends up in waterways. Putting it in a bowl is a rare case of the thing that's good for your dog also being good for the planet.

Why this is ReWilding in a bowl

ReWilding the diet, for me, comes down to a question: what did the animal in front of me evolve to eat, and what did we quietly take away?

Prey has blood. The blood isn't a supplement, it's part of the meal. When we cook, extrude, and portion everything into pellets and patties, we strip out the liquid and then bolt on a premix to make the label add up. Geoff's line about calcium made me laugh and wince at the same time: how does a giraffe get big enough to be a giraffe? By eating acacia leaves. How does a cow grow to be a cow? Grass. The nutrients were in the food all along. "Science is starting to discover what nature already understands" is how he put it, and I could put that on a t-shirt.

He's also refreshingly honest about the one place his process departs from nature. Turning blood into a powder means processing it, and processing removes something. He estimates less than five percent of the nutrients, and he chose cold pressing and a gentle process precisely to avoid taking out more. "It hurts me to do so," he said. But it's the only way to get blood into the bowl of every dog and cat who needs it. That kind of straight talk is why I trust him.

Meet Blood Buds

The big news is a brand-new line launching at the end of October: Blood Buds, cold-pressed treats made from Totoniks blood powder. You can tell Geoff designed them for humans who are, understandably, a little squeamish about liquid blood. They're also training treats, so they don't crumble the way freeze-dried treats do, and they don't need refrigeration.

What I learned about them:

• Cold-pressed with as little heat as possible. The first prototypes fell apart because Geoff refused to add heat or pressure beyond the minimum. He told me the process is precise enough that each bag contains a set count, around 86 to 87 treats.
• Priced at roughly $13.95 in the US, per Geoff.
• Shelf-stable. Blood is hygroscopic, meaning it pulls in moisture, so each bag gets a sachet to keep it dry, and low moisture is what keeps them stable.
• Three formulas: Daily Boost, a general-purpose everyday treat in the spirit of the Fussy Eater topper. Daily Glow, with hoki collagen for skin and coat, which Geoff says is double the efficacy of green-lipped mussel. Daily Leap, for hips and joints, with green-lipped mussel, hoki collagen, and marine collagen.

Stores that haven't seen the treats yet have already ordered them. That tells you something about how Totoniks is landing with the people who actually sell it.

If you want to start now, the current toppers are in the Wild Wellness Pet shop: Fussy Eater (also for big dogs), Gut Health (also for big dogs), and Hip, Joint + Hydration (also for big dogs).

Blood for cats

Cats were always part of the plan, and Geoff wanted to get it right before launching. The challenge he described is one every cat parent knows: cats don't like putting their heads over a deep bowl because it exposes their throat. He saw the same thing when he developed cat food at his earlier company, where cats would back away from a bowl of something that looked alive. So he's solved for that with the new cat product. He wouldn't tell me how, but it's species-appropriate, and the cat line is coming. (If you've fed a cat from an appetizer plate, you already know the trick.)

Until then, here's what I do for my cats. My oldest likes a specific freeze-dried food, so I put it in a glass container, empty a sachet of Totoniks over it, fill it with bone broth, and let it sit. That's his food for a few days. If you're moving a cat toward fresher food, you may want to read what Sabrina Simmons of RAWR told me about transitioning.

Geoff also hinted that the way Totoniks is delivered will change within the next twelve months, with fewer sachets and less waste. I'll share more when I can.

The maltodextrin question

I get asked about this constantly, and I wanted Geoff to answer it on the record. If you've looked at the current Totoniks label, you'll see maltodextrin, and "traditionally we don't like it" is exactly where my head goes too.

Here is what he told me. Blood is incredibly sticky, and you can't get it through a drying and powdering line without a flow agent. Otherwise it clogs the machines. So he needs something. The ingredient he uses comes from cassava root, which he chose because it's a clean source with plenty of minerals. Once cassava is processed into a powder, though, it gets a different name on paper, and when he first described it to New Zealand's regulator (MPI), they called it maltodextrin. He disagreed. After months of back and forth, he says he won the right to call it tapioca starch, which he admits still isn't a perfect description since it's been processed. The new Blood Buds boxes and the newer packaging won't say maltodextrin at all. His point: the product inside didn't change, the paperwork did.

Two things from Totoniks' own materials back up the amount. Their explanation says a daily serving contains just 0.32 to 0.56 percent of it. And their ingredients page notes that most companies use corn-based maltodextrin, which is often GMO and glyphosate-heavy, which they avoided by using cassava. (Their website still describes it as cassava-derived maltodextrin, so expect the wording to catch up with the new packaging.)

My honest take, and I'll say it as someone who reads labels for a living: it is still a processed starch, and I'd rather not need it. But at that amount, with a clean source and a real mechanical reason, it's a trade-off I can live with in exchange for a bioavailable food that most pets would never otherwise get. Geoff said it himself: "Nothing's perfect." The question is whether the company is honest about it, and in this case they were willing to explain it on air.

Quality control that put me at ease

One more thing worth mentioning, because it matters. Everything that leaves New Zealand for sale, even for dogs and cats, must come from a human-food facility and be human-food-grade. Geoff says every batch is tested for Salmonella (he pulls five sachets per batch and nothing is released until the results are in), and for heavy metals and everything else that's flagged. If any product is recalled, he told me, the law gives him 24 hours to notify the Governor General of New Zealand. That's Geoff's account of the rules, and it's a higher bar than I see in a lot of the industry.

What I took away

I came into this conversation already a fan. I left even more convinced that the future of pet food is less about inventing something new and more about putting back what we took out. Geoff said it best: this isn't for him, it isn't for anyone else, "it's for those four-legged friends."

Blood isn't a trend. It's a missing piece. And whether you start with a topper, a Blood Bud, or a cat formula when it arrives, it's one of the simplest ways I know to move a bowl closer to the wild.

Get to know Geoff and his products at Totoniks, and find them in my Recommended Brands.

Listen to the full episode here.