Inside the Mind of a Formulator: What Makes a Great Dog Supplement

Wholefood Nutrition, Absorption, and Why Formulation Matters More Than Marketing

When you spend years formulating and manufacturing supplements - not just conceptually, but at the raw-ingredient, supply-chain and standards level, you start to see very quickly how much of the supplement industry is driven by marketing convenience rather than nutritional integrity.

As the founder of Augustine Approved Pty Ltd, recognised globally as a pioneer in raising industry quality for animal-use supplements and skincare to human-grade and certified organic standards, I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with ingredient suppliers, certifiers, nutritionists, and manufacturers operating at human food standards.

That experience has given me a front-row seat to how supplements are really made, what corners are commonly cut, and why so many products look impressive on paper yet fall short in practice.

This article is an inside look at how I personally approach formulating dog supplements, what I look for in ingredients, and why absorption, assimilation, and formulation matter far more than buzzwords or bold claims. I am excited to share with you principles that guide every formulation decision I make, and helping people better understand what truly separates quality nutrition from clever marketing.

Wholefood Nutrients

Wholefood nutrients are vitamins, minerals, and compounds that come from recognisable food sources, not isolated chemical processes.

Instead of being manufactured as single, isolated molecules, wholefood nutrients exist in the same form they would naturally appear in foods - alongside a complex matrix of naturally occurring compounds such as:
• amino acids
• enzymes
• trace minerals
• phytonutrients
• naturally occurring cofactors

This matters, because the body commonly processes nutrients alongside cofactors found in foods. It evolved to process nutrients as they appear in nature, working together, not separately.

Writing this blog entry reminded me of the question I ultimately built my entire company around:
“If all of these products are supposedly so healthy for our dogs, why can’t we eat them?”
And yes, I consume all of our canine supplements and I even use our skincare on myself and there are no side-effects - not a single bark.

 

Absorption vs Assimilation (They’re Not the Same Thing)

One of the biggest misunderstandings in supplementation is the assumption that if a nutrient is present, it must be useful.

In reality, there are two very different steps:
•    Absorption: getting the nutrient across the gut wall
•    Assimilation: the body actually recognising and utilising that nutrient

A supplement can look “balanced” on paper, but that doesn’t guarantee the body can efficiently use what’s been consumed.

Wholefood nutrients are generally more bioavailable, because they arrive with the naturally occurring compounds the body expects to see alongside them. This often allows for more efficient recognition and utilisation, without the body having to adapt or compensate.

 

Synthetic Nutrients: Not Always “Bad”, But Often Incomplete

Synthetic nutrients aren’t inherently evil - and I want to be very clear about that.

They can serve a purpose, and in some cases they are used because they are stable, measurable, and easy to standardise.

However, problems can arise when synthetic nutrients are used without an understanding of cofactors.

Many isolated synthetic vitamins and minerals are missing the naturally occurring amino acids and compounds that help the body utilise them efficiently. When this happens, one of two things will often occur:
1. The body may draw on its existing nutrient reserves to help bind and utilise the isolated nutrient
2. Or the nutrient may simply pass through the body unused

In both scenarios, the supplement technically exists in the diet - but its contribution may be limited, inconsistent, or inefficient.

This is one of the reasons why some diets and supplements appear “balanced” on paper, yet don’t always translate to the same results in the real world.

 

Hidden Danger of Extracts and Synthetic Nutrients

In the wider supplement industry, it is increasingly  recognised that highly concentrated or synthetic nutrients can present risks when consumed excessively, particularly when they bear little resemblance to the amounts normally obtained from wholefoods. Public reporting in Australia has highlighted concerns around very high levels of certain vitamins in some human supplements, reinforcing the principle that more is not always better.

The same consideration applies to animal nutrition. Dogs are not designed to process unnaturally concentrated inputs, and responsible formulation prioritises balance, appropriate quantities, and bioavailable forms that the body can recognise and utilise.

This is why a food-first, measured approach to supplementation matters - supporting normal physiological function rather than overwhelming it.

 

Why “Balance on Paper” Isn’t the Same as Balance in the Body

Many highly processed foods rely on synthetic supplementation to replace nutrients lost during manufacturing.

Again, this isn’t automatically wrong - but it does raise an important question:
Is the nutrient present, or is it usable?

Without proper bioavailability testing and long-term observation, there’s often no clear evidence that these nutrients are being absorbed and assimilated in the way we assume.

This is why, early in my time in the industry, while examining commercial dog foods and their reliance on synthetic supplementation to restore “balance” after processing, I coined the phrase The Balanced Meal Myth (read the article).

Nutrition is not just about numbers. It’s about how the body interacts with what it’s given.

 

Marketing Versus Meaningful Formulation

One trend I’ve noticed increasingly is the practice of adding a token amount of whatever ingredient happens to be fashionable at the time - whether it’s a trendy fruit, mushroom, herb, or mineral - not because it meaningfully contributes to the formula, but because it looks good in marketing. There's a long running joke about pet food companies spending more on their marketing departments than on ingredients.

By law, ingredients must be listed in order from most used to least used, so one of the simplest ways to cut through the hype is to compare what’s highlighted in advertisements with where those ingredients actually appear on the ingredient list.

If a heavily promoted ingredient sits near the bottom, it’s often present in amounts too small to make a practical difference. I also pay close attention to whether those ingredients come from wholefood sources or isolated synthetic forms, as origin and context matter just as much as inclusion.

 

A Quick Word on Colour (and Who It’s Really For)

One of the more amusing things you notice once you’ve spent enough time around formulation is just how much effort goes into making pet food look appealing - not to dogs, but to the humans buying it. Bright reds, greens, yellows, little rainbow bits… all carefully designed to catch the eye at the shelf.

The irony? Dogs don’t care. They’re not standing there thinking, “Ooooh, this one has more colours — must be healthier.” Their priorities are smell, texture, and whether it resembles something remotely edible.

Those colours aren’t there for canine biology - they’re there for marketing psychology. It’s a reminder that sometimes what’s sold as “premium” nutrition is really just a visual trick for people, not a functional choice for dogs.

 

How Some Synthetic Nutrients Are Made

This is where some people are genuinely surprised.

Certain synthetic vitamins - including some B vitamins - are produced through industrial chemical processes, sometimes using petroleum-derived substrates or coal-tar derivatives as starting materials.

That doesn’t automatically make them unsafe, but it does highlight how far removed some nutrients can be from their original, food-based form.

For me, this reinforces a simple principle:
If nature already provides a nutrient in a usable form, why not start there?

 

A Back-to-Nature Philosophy

When we formulate, our goal isn’t to force the body to respond. It’s to work with it.

Wholefood nutrients tend to align more naturally with digestive processes, which is why they’re often considered gentler on the digestive system. Because they arrive in a familiar food matrix, the body doesn’t need to “figure them out” in the same way it might with isolated compounds.

This is especially relevant for dogs consuming highly processed diets as this increases how hard the body must work to maintain pH balance. Processed foods put additional metabolic strain on the system. You can read more about that here:
It’s Not Always Arthritis: A Whole-Dog Look at Inflammation

For these reasons I tend to stay away from extracts (synthetic or natural), but with most things in life there are some exceptions and mushrooms being one of them.

Whole mushrooms contain valuable compounds, but they’re naturally bound within tough cell walls made of chitin - a substance dogs don’t efficiently break down through digestion alone. Because of this, extraction is often used to improve accessibility/bioavailability of certain compounds.

Importantly, properly produced mushroom extracts still begin with whole mushroom material. The extraction process doesn’t remove them from their natural origin - it simply transforms them into a form the body can recognise and utilise more effectively.

If you’d like a deeper, step-by-step explanation of mushroom powders, extracts, and tinctures, and why these distinctions matter, you can read our full mushroom guide here:
The Mushroom Blog: Everything You Need to Know About Powders, Extracts and Tinctures

 
Why Wholefood Supplements Can Add Value to Processed Diets

Not every dog eats a fresh or minimally processed diet. That’s reality.

Adding a wholefood supplement to a processed meal can help introduce naturally occurring nutrients and compounds that may otherwise be absent or altered during manufacturing.

Think of it less as “fixing” a diet, and more as supporting nutritional diversity - bringing something closer to what the body evolved to recognise.

You can learn more about the importance of supplementing your dog's diet here:
Why Every Dog Benefits From Supplements | Even If You're Feeding A Healthy Diet

 

Shelf Life, Cost, and Why We Don’t Optimise for Either

This is where things get uncomfortable for manufacturers - especially small ones.

Wholefood ingredients:
•    often have shorter shelf lives
•    can be harder to source
•    may be seasonal or inconsistent in supply and physical appearance
•    are almost always more expensive

Synthetic ingredients, on the other hand, are:
•    shelf-stable
•    always available
•    easy to standardise
•    significantly cheaper

From a business perspective, the choice is obvious. From a formulation philosophy perspective, it isn’t.

I have never designed products around shelf life or cost efficiency. I design them around nutritional integrity, even when that creates supply challenges.

And yes - as a small business, maintaining consistent access to wholefood ingredients is one of our biggest ongoing challenges.

But this is where I always come back to the same point: Integrity in formulation translates to the same results in the real world.

That’s why we don’t cut corners.

 

Why I Stand by What We’ve Built

I’m proud of the fact that we chose a harder path. We became the first company in the world to produce certified organic supplements, made to human food standards, formulated specifically for dogs - not because it was easy, but because it aligned with how I believe nutrition works - in harmony with nature.

While one could argue that feeding dogs wholefood ingredients that would not be consumed by dogs in the wild is not natural, there is a lot that can be said about doing something that supports nature rather than going against it.

I’m confident we pay more for our raw ingredients than just about anyone else in this space. Not because it sounds good - but because it helps me sleep at night knowing that I am giving our dogs the very best possible.

 

Final Thoughts

Choosing a dog supplement shouldn’t be about hype, fear, or miracle claims. It should be about:
•    ingredient quality
•    formulation integrity
•    understanding how the body recognises nutrients

Wholefood nutrition isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing things in harmony with the body, the way nature intended. That philosophy guides everything we do - and it’s why I’m proud to stand by it.

 

Educational Note

This article is for general informational and educational purposes only. It does not provide veterinary advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult a qualified veterinarian regarding medical concerns.