Our story — Meet Anthony
My grandfather came to Albany from Lebanon in 1971 with about four hundred dollars and a trade. He set up a small leather and wool workshop on the edge of town, mostly doing repairs and custom saddle work for farmers around the Great Southern. By the time my father took it over in the early nineties, they had a handful of wholesale accounts and a reputation that stretched as far as Manjimup. I grew up in that shed. Cutting leather after school, sorting wool clips on weekends, learning which suppliers were worth the drive and which ones talked a bigger game than they delivered. That workshop is where I got my eye for materials.
Before Peak Pets Co existed, I spent about seven years working in supply chain for a Perth-based distributor. Decent job, not particularly interesting. I was moving product I had no connection to, for margins I couldn't justify to myself. In 2019 I drove down to Albany for my father's sixty-fifth birthday and he walked me through the workshop, which by then was mostly sitting idle. He had a couple of accounts left, a Merino wool supplier out of Kojonup he'd been buying from since 2003, and about eighty kilos of kangaroo leather he'd sourced from a tannery near Bunbury. He wasn't sure what to do with any of it. I drove back to Perth thinking about that the whole way.
The decision came down to one weekend in March 2020. I had two options sitting in front of me: renew my lease in Perth and stay in supply chain, or move to Mudgee where my wife's family had a property and try to build something using what I'd grown up around. The leather and wool I knew. The pet market was something I'd been watching for a couple of years. Australians were spending more on their animals and most of what was available was imported, generic, and not built to last. I called the Kojonup supplier, confirmed I could still get the wool, registered PETSNUTS PTY LTD in April 2020, and started working out of a rented shed on the edge of Mudgee.
We're based in Mudgee now, which suits us. The property is about twelve kilometres from the main street, and we have enough space to store materials and run a small team properly. We still source Merino wool through the same Kojonup connection my father used, and the kangaroo leather still comes through a tannery in the South West. The catalogue has grown since that first year, but the thinking behind each product is the same as it was in that Albany shed. If the material isn't right, we don't use it. That's not a policy, it's just how we were brought up.
— Built from what we already knew how to do. — Anthony, Anthony Charbel
Journal
Where our kangaroo leather actually comes from
I drove six hours last month to meet the tannery supplying our kangaroo leather collars, and it was worth every kilometre.
Most people assume kangaroo leather is some niche novelty thing, a gimmick for tourists. I thought that too, until Dad showed me a collar he'd had made back in 1987 that still sits in the workshop drawer, still supple, still holding its stitching. That collar outlasted three dogs and a house move. When I started thinking seriously about what Peak Pets Co should stock, that drawer kept coming back to me. So in February I drove down to a small tannery outside Dubbo, about two and a half hours southwest of Mudgee, to actually see how the hides are processed before I committed to anything.
The operation there is run by a bloke named Glenn who has been working kangaroo leather for over 30 years. He sources from licensed harvesters operating under the NSW commercial harvest program, which has strict quotas tied to population surveys done annually. Glenn walked me through the whole thing, from hide selection to the drum tanning process. Kangaroo hide is roughly 10 times stronger than cowhide at the same thickness, which sounds like marketing until you hold a finished piece and bend it back on itself without it creasing. It genuinely does not behave like other leathers.
What convinced me to go ahead was the off-cut rate. Glenn told me they waste less than 8 percent of each hide across all their products, which is low for a tannery. The collars we ended up specifying use a single-layer construction rather than the folded-and-glued method you see on cheaper dog collars. Single layer means the collar stays flat against the dog's neck, dries faster after a swim in the Cudgegong, and does not delaminate in humid summers. The hardware is solid brass, sourced through a fittings supplier in Parramatta.
I brought a sample collar home and put it on our border collie, Reg, who is the most reliable product tester I have. He bolted through the blackberries twice that afternoon chasing a rabbit he will never catch. The collar came back scratched on the hardware and smelling like creek mud, which is about as real a test as you can run in Mudgee in late summer. The leather itself was unmarked. I wiped it down, let it dry in the shade, and it looked the same as when it went on that morning. That was enough for me.
Dad never sold collars at the old workshop, he stuck to feed and bedding. But he always said the best products are the ones you stop noticing because they just work. I think he would have liked this one. I am not trying to reinvent what he built here, just add things that make sense for where we are now and what people actually need for their animals.
Getting the smart feeder working without losing your mind
The smart feeder setup instructions assume you have perfect Wi-Fi and infinite patience, so here is what actually worked for us.
We started stocking the Smart Pet Feeder back in May and within about three weeks I had received six emails from customers who could not get it connected. I set one up myself on the bench at home to figure out what was going wrong, and I will be honest, the included instruction sheet is not great. It was clearly written for a different market and then translated. Some of the steps are out of order and there is one point where it tells you to press a button that does not exist on the current hardware version. So I am writing down what actually works, based on setting up four units across two different home Wi-Fi configurations.
The most common problem is the feeder only supports 2.4 GHz networks, not 5 GHz. Most modern routers broadcast both under the same name, so your phone might connect to 5 GHz while the feeder is trying to find 2.4 GHz and failing silently. The fix is to temporarily split your network in your router settings, give the 2.4 GHz band a separate name, connect your phone to that band, and then run the feeder setup. Once it is paired you can switch your phone back. It is annoying but it only takes about 10 minutes once you know what you are doing.
The second issue is portion size calibration. The feeder measures by rotation count rather than weight, so the actual gram amount per portion depends entirely on the kibble size you are using. Small dense kibble like most cat biscuits will dispense roughly 15 grams per portion unit. Large breed dog kibble can be closer to 22 grams for the same setting. I recommend weighing the first three portions with a kitchen scale and adjusting from there. The app lets you set portions in 0.5 unit increments, which gives you enough fine control once you know your baseline.
The scheduling function is the part that genuinely impressed me. You can set up to 8 meals per day with individual portion sizes, which is useful if you have an animal on a split feeding plan for weight management or a medical reason. The manual feed button on the unit itself also works without the app, which matters if your internet goes down or your phone dies. A few customers in areas outside Mudgee with patchy NBN told me this was a dealbreaker for them, so it is worth knowing the feeder does not become a brick when connectivity drops.
One last thing. The hopper holds about 1.8 kilograms of dry food, which for a medium-sized dog on two meals a day lasts roughly 10 to 12 days before you need to refill. Keep the hopper lid clicked fully shut. If it is even slightly ajar, humidity gets in and kibble can clump in the dispensing mechanism. We are in a reasonably dry climate up here in Mudgee but I have heard from customers on the coast where this is a real problem.
Following our wool from paddock to dog bed
Shearing season in the Central West is a particular kind of chaos, and this year I managed to spend a day watching ours get done.
The wool inside our Australian Wool Dog Beds comes from a Merino operation about 40 kilometres north of Mudgee, run by a family called the Torrences who have been on that country for three generations. I have known them loosely for years through the local agricultural show circuit, but it was only this past October that I actually drove out there during shearing to see the clip happen. They run around 1,200 ewes, and shearing takes about five days with a four-person team. The shed smells like lanolin and machine oil and sawdust, which I find oddly calming, though I am probably in the minority there.
The fleece we use is what the industry calls the belly and skirting offcuts, the portions that get separated from the main clip because they are too short or uneven for apparel wool processing. It is perfectly good fibre, just not the right spec for fine wool buyers. For a dog bed filling it is ideal because the natural lanolin content stays higher in these cuts, which gives the bed its water-resistant quality and that faint wool smell that dogs seem to genuinely like. Reg has had his for eight months and still chooses it over the foam bed we have in the other room, which tells me something.
After the clip, the wool goes to a small processing facility in Bathurst, about an hour and a half east of here, where it is scoured to remove the bulk of the vegetable matter and surface dirt, then carded into the batting we use as fill. We do not bleach it or add fire retardants. The scouring process alone brings the lanolin level down to about 1.5 percent, which is clean enough for indoor use without stripping the fibre of its natural properties. The whole clip-to-batting process takes around six weeks, which means shearing in October puts finished beds ready for filling by mid-December.
The outer cover is a heavy cotton canvas sewn at a small operation in Orange. I went back and forth on the cover material for a long time. Synthetic fleece looks soft but it pills badly with washing and holds static that attracts every bit of hair and dust in the house. Canvas is harder wearing, washes at 40 degrees without distorting, and ages well. The covers have a full-length zip so you can pull the wool batting out for airing, which I recommend doing a couple of times a year. Just lay it flat in the shade for a few hours. Sun and airflow do more for wool than any spray product.
Dad's workshop never stocked anything like this. He sold stockfeed and basic supplies, practical things for working animals. The dog beds feel like a small step sideways from that, but the logic is the same, use local materials, keep the supply chain short enough that you actually know who you are dealing with. The Torrences know their wool ends up in a dog bed and find it mildly amusing. I can live with that.
Cat litter, summer heat, and why we switched suppliers
Last January was the hottest stretch Mudgee had seen in four years, and our eco cat litter situation became a genuine problem worth talking about.
January this year hit 43 degrees three days in a row, which is not unusual for the Central Tablelands but it is still brutal. We have two cats, both indoor, and the litter tray situation in that kind of heat becomes urgent in a way that is hard to overstate. I had been stocking a plant-based eco litter made from compressed wheat that I was reasonably happy with, but over that heat wave I noticed it was breaking down much faster than normal, clumping poorly, and the odour control was basically gone by day two. I had several customers email me with the same complaint around the same time. So I started looking at alternatives properly.
The litter we have moved to now is made from recycled paper pulp, processed at a facility in South Australia. Paper litter handles heat differently to wheat or corn-based options because it absorbs moisture into the pellet rather than forming a surface crust. In normal temperatures the difference is minor. In sustained heat above 38 degrees it is significant. The pellets hold their shape longer, which means the tray stays manageable for longer between full changes. I ran both side by side for six weeks across January and February, changing each tray on the same schedule, and the paper pellet tray was consistently better at the 48-hour mark.
There are trade-offs worth naming. Paper litter is heavier per bag than wheat or corn, which matters if you are buying in bulk and storing it. A 15-kilogram bag is genuinely awkward to move around. It also does not track as much on cat paws, which I consider an advantage, but some cats take a few days to accept the different texture underfoot. Our older cat, Iris, ignored the new tray for about 36 hours before she decided it was acceptable. The younger one did not care at all.
I should also say that the eco angle here is real rather than a claim I am taking on faith. Paper litter is biodegradable and can go into a compost bin designated for pet waste, though not into general garden compost for obvious reasons. The compressed pellets break down within a few weeks in the right conditions. The wheat litter we were using prior also claimed to be compostable but the wheat gluten used in the clumping process slows decomposition considerably. I checked with two different composting sources on that before switching.
Running a small business in regional NSW means you notice when products fail in local conditions, because your customers are dealing with the same climate you are. A litter product that works fine in a Sydney apartment with ducted air conditioning is not necessarily the right call for someone in Mudgee with an old weatherboard house and a ceiling fan. That is the kind of thing I think about more than I probably should, but there it is.
Customer reviews
Sarah M. — Northcote, VIC — 2024-03-14 — 5/5
Collar holds up better than expected
Ordered the Kangaroo Leather Collar for my kelpie and it arrived in four days, which was faster than I expected given I'm in Melbourne. The leather feels solid and has aged nicely after a few months of daily wear. Sizing was spot on using the guide on the website.
James T. — New Farm, QLD — 2024-06-22 — 4/5
Smart feeder works well, setup took a bit
The Smart Pet Feeder does exactly what it says — I can schedule feeds from my phone and it hasn't missed one in three months. Initial setup took about 20 minutes and the app instructions could be clearer, but once it's running it's reliable. Worth the price for the peace of mind when I travel.
Priya K. — Surry Hills, NSW — 2024-08-05 — 5/5
Cat actually uses the toy
I've bought a lot of cat toys that get ignored after day one. The Interactive Cat Toy has been out for six weeks and my cat still goes for it every evening. The motion pattern changes enough to keep her interested. Good value at that price.
Ben O. — Fremantle, WA — 2024-10-11 — 4/5
Cat litter does the job
Switched to the Eco-Friendly Cat Litter after my previous brand kept going out of stock. It clumps well and the dust is noticeably less than what I was using before. Delivery to Fremantle took six business days on standard shipping, which is about right for WA.
Claire B. — Brunswick, VIC — 2024-11-30 — 5/5
Dog bed is genuinely thick and warm
Bought the Australian Wool Dog Bed for our staffy heading into winter and she claimed it within about ten minutes of me putting it down. The wool fill is dense — it doesn't flatten out like foam-filled beds tend to. The insert came out of the washing machine without any shrinkage.
Tom H. — Paddington, QLD — 2025-01-08 — 5/5
Ordered as a gift, packaged nicely
Got the gift wrapping option for the Kangaroo Leather Collar and it looked great when my mate opened it. The note card was handwritten, which was a small detail but made a difference. Collar quality is solid — his border collie has been wearing it daily since Christmas.
Nina R. — Glenelg, SA — 2025-02-19 — 4/5
Good feeder, check the Wi-Fi requirements first
The Smart Pet Feeder has been running without issues for about six weeks now. One thing I'd flag: it only connects to 2.4GHz Wi-Fi, which caught me out initially because my router defaults to 5GHz. Once I sorted that it connected first try. Customer service replied to my email within a few hours, which I appreciated.
Lachlan W. — Hobart, TAS — 2025-04-03 — 5/5
Wool bed surviving a muddy Tasmanian winter
We're three months into a wet Tassie autumn and the Australian Wool Dog Bed is holding up well. I've washed the insert twice and it still looks the same shape. My border collie doesn't sleep anywhere else now, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Shipping
We ship Australia-wide using Australia Post for standard delivery and StarTrack for express. Standard orders placed before 2pm AEST Monday to Friday are dispatched the same day and typically arrive within 3–8 business days. Express orders follow the same cutoff and generally reach metro addresses in 1–3 business days. Orders over $75 ship free on the standard service. Under $75, standard is a flat $9.95 and express is $14.95. All prices include GST. Once your order leaves our Mudgee workshop you'll receive a tracking number by email so you can follow it along the way.
Delivery estimates vary by region. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide metro areas are usually at the faster end of the standard window — around 3–5 business days. Perth and Hobart metro typically sit at 5–7 business days. Regional and rural postcodes, including parts of WA, NT and outback NSW and QLD, can take up to 8 business days or occasionally longer depending on Australia Post's network in that area. If you're in a remote postcode and need something by a specific date, express is the safer option. We'll always give you a realistic heads-up if there are any known carrier delays affecting your region.
We pack orders carefully using recycled cardboard boxes and paper void fill to keep things secure in transit. If your order arrives damaged, take photos of the outer packaging and the item before doing anything else, then email us at hello@peakpetsco.com.au within 48 hours of delivery. We'll arrange a replacement or refund promptly — you won't need to argue the point. For large or bulky items like the Smart Pet Feeder and Australian Wool Dog Bed, StarTrack is used by default on express regardless of your carrier preference, as it handles those dimensions more reliably.
Returns
You have 30 days from the date of delivery to return most items for a refund or exchange. To be eligible, products need to be unused, in their original packaging and in resalable condition. To start a return, email hello@peakpetsco.com.au with your order number and a brief reason. We'll confirm the return address — our returns are processed through our Mudgee workshop — and provide instructions. Return postage is at your cost for change-of-mind returns. If the item is faulty or we sent the wrong product, we cover the return shipping in full.
Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law (ACL) apply to every purchase from Peak Pets Co regardless of our store policy. If a product has a major fault, is not fit for its described purpose or doesn't match what was advertised, you are entitled to a remedy — which may be a repair, replacement or refund depending on the situation. These rights don't have an expiry date tied to our 30-day window and cannot be excluded. If you believe a product has a genuine defect, contact us and we'll work through it with you directly. We won't make you jump through hoops.
A few things we can't accept back: opened cat litter that has been used (for hygiene reasons), items that have been damaged through misuse or normal wear and tear, and any custom-sized or personalised products made to your specifications. Refunds for approved returns are processed within 5 business days of us receiving the item back at our workshop. The refund goes back to your original payment method. If you paid by credit card, allow a few extra days for your bank to process it on their end. If you have any questions about whether your item qualifies, just ask before you send it back.