The Chatty Gourmet

This year were are lucky enough to join the weight loss journey with Wendy Nan Rees!! For those of you who are not familiar with her work with animals, this following blog is all about her. We will be keeping up with her progress on our our blog every week. Currently she is enjoying Susan's Healthy Gourmet meals and incorporating her love for yoga into her daily activities.

Wendy Nan Rees has been involved in the pet industry for over 25 years. Her career began when she founded Lip Smackers, Inc., a company dedicated to providing healthy all-natural treats to consumers concerned about their pets’ well-being. The Lip Smackers bakery still operates today out of The Pet Care Company located in Hermosa Beach, CA.

Wendy has come full circle with her new book “The Dog Devotional: 365 Tips, Tricks and Techniques for Living a Rich Life with Your Dog”. It is a collection of many of Wendy’s most popular tricks and techniques she has used over her 25+ years as a Pet Lifestyle Advisor™. It is one of the most comprehensive “How to” dog books that has come along in many years. While reading this book you will be able to pick up on Wendy’s enthusiasm. The real secret Wendy is teaching us here is that we are giving back the unconditional love that our dogs offer us.

It is the latest in a long line of books, published by MS. Rees. Her most recent book The Natural Pet Food Cookbook: Healthful Recipes for Dogs and Cats, published in 2007, is a collection of fifty recipes which rely on natural ingredient, which also includes information about holistic pet care. It is available many places and is one of the few books sold by Whole Foods.

Other books include: No Barking at the Table: Canine Recipes Most Begged For. The book was so well-received that No Barking at the Table 2 and No Catnapping in the Kitchen were not far behind. Moving in a different direction, Wendy then published The Name Game, a collection of over 100 celebrity essays along with over 1,000 suggestions of pet names. This fun book offers pet owners an entertaining and unique take on how and why people name their pets. A percentage of the proceeds from The Name Game go directly to PAWS, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people with HIV/AIDS to care for their pets.

Wendy’s success as an author and dog-treat creator is no less amazing, due to the fact that she was born with severe dyslexia and ADHD. Wendy and her family were told that Wendy would not graduate high school. However, whenever Wendy is presented with obstacles in her life, it kicks her driving engine into gear and she charges ahead to prove all the naysayers wrong.

Her previous successes led to numerous television appearances and newspaper and magazine articles. She was the “Pet Lifestyle Advisor™” on Animal Planet’s Petsburgh, USA and has also appeared on The Home Shopping Network.  Wendy also wrote a monthly column called “In the Kitchen with Wendy” for Your Pet Magazine.

Not one to rest on her success, Wendy focused on her entrepreneurial side, helping to create Cedar Green ®, a line of all-natural odor eliminators created with pet owners in mind. The signature product is Freshen Vac; a heat-activated natural odor eliminator that can be used in vacuum cleaners, dog beds, any home air vent and in cars.

In 2000 Wendy was diagnosed with breast cancer, which forced her to take a break from her career to focus all her energy on her recovery. Today, Wendy is happy to say she is cancer-free and working on her worldwide internet radio show called Wendy's Animal Talk. You can hear Wendy every Tuesday at 1PM PST at www.healthylife.net . Wendy also writes two weekly pet tips for the web site www.lovetoknow.com where she provides dog and cat advice.

You can use many words to describe Wendy Nan Rees - author, cancer survivor, inventor, and entrepreneur. And while each of these terms is accurate, they are only part of a truly inspiring and creative woman, who uses her talents to innovate an industry that she has loved since she was a child—the world of pets. Wendy lives in Los Angeles with her dogs Senator, Cappy and Little Man.

Check out our blog every week to keep up with Wendy's weightloss success with Susan's Healthy Gourmet! Here's to your health Wendy!