How Rudy the Picky Pug Became The Star of Our Freshpet Commercial

At Freshpet, we don’t play favorites with breeds. Big and small, purebred and mutts, we’re the kind of proud pet parents who fall in love with every dog we meet.

But even we’ll admit, there’s something so uniquely charming (and entertaining) about pugs that they’re just hard to resist. So when we first heard about Rudy the pug, who went on a hunger strike until he got his paws on some Freshpet, we knew we had to meet the little guy.

Rudy’s mom, Mary Ann, first wrote to us early in 2017 to tell us about the scary time period when Rudy suddenly stopped eating. As you might have seen in the commercial, he was a regular happy, active 12-year-old, until one day he simply refused to eat his old kibble. Mary Ann quickly went from concern to outright worry when Rudy showed no interest in his human brother’s homecoming.

“What really scared me most was when my son came home, and Rudy didn’t even take notice,” Mary Ann says. “He’d usually be so excited, but instead he was just lethargic and confused. It wasn’t like Rudy at all.”

At their wits end, Rudy’s family was ready to take him to the vet. Until his dad remembered that about a year earlier, they had used Freshpet as a soft, tasty way to hide a pill for Rudy. He’d loved it and finished that first roll with gusto, but they hadn’t picked up another one since.

But things were looking desperate, so after a late night run to the grocery store, Rudy’s dad returned with a roll of Freshpet Select.

“We cut it up and placed a bowl full in front of him, and within 20 minutes we had our pug back” Mary Ann says.

It’s these kind of stories we love to hear, and share back with our fans. Rudy was the ultimate picky eater, but we get tons of letters telling us about dogs and cats everywhere who showed no interest in their food – until they found Freshpet. 

And that’s not an accident. Pets enjoy our food because we only use real, fresh ingredients that we slowly steam cook to maintain nutrition and taste. With Freshpet, the fridge is our only preservative. We never use any pre-processed meat powders, “chicken meals,” or by-products – just real US meat as the #1 ingredient, and real veggies you can see. Picky pets can taste (and smell) the difference, which is how come we’re proud to say we’re “Picky Eater Approved.”

If you have a dog or cat at home who shows signs of distracted eating, or simply refuses to touch their food like Rudy did, Freshpet’s all-natural recipes may be just the thing they need to get excited about mealtime again!