Our History
Our history: a mill, a family, and the first ostrich dog food in the world
The company behind Happy Dog has milled on the River Singold since 1765 and made dog food since 1965. Here is the story, in the dates that mattered.
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1765The old mill
Nikolaus Müller buys the mill on the Singold in Wehringen. The family has been there ever since.
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1951Potato flakes
Edmund Müller makes the first potato flakes: easy to digest, easy to store, and a step forward for the farms around Augsburg.
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1965The first dog food
Müller’s Hundenahrung, flakes and wet food, starts production.
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1970Happy Dog
Edmund Müller develops one of the first highly digestible complete foods for dogs: dried meat, maize flakes and vegetables. Müller’s Hundenahrung becomes Happy Dog.
- 1973First exports
Austria and Denmark are the first countries outside Germany to get Happy Dog.
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1975The first kibble
The first extruder starts up and kibble joins the flakes.
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1987Seventh generation
Georg Müller joins the business and takes it over after the founder’s death in 1988. He still runs it today.
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1992NaturCroq
The first complete kibble food. Lamb & Rice and Balance are still in the range.
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2000Sensible
Happy Dog enters the super-premium segment with Supreme Salmon & Rabbit. The first Sensible recipes are Ireland, Toscana and New Zealand.
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2004 to 2006A bigger plant
New offices, two more extruder lines and a silo tower take capacity to 200 tonnes a day.
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2009Africa
Happy Dog Supreme Africa becomes the first dog food in the world made with ostrich. Since then two per cent of every pack sold has gone to SOS Children’s Villages, now more than two million euros.
- 2015Germany’s specialist-retail favourite
Happy Dog becomes the leading dry dog food brand in German specialist retail.
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2018Eighth generation
Annika and Andreas Müller join the family business.
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2020Fresh ingredients
A fifth extruder allows fresh raw materials to be processed and takes capacity to 320 tonnes a day.
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2023Solar
A solar park is built beside the plant to generate part of its own electricity; it has run on 100% purchased green electricity since 2021.
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202485 countries
Happy Dog and Happy Cat are now sold in 85 countries on four continents, including, since 2020, direct to UK homes.
What has not changed
Dry food is still made in Wehringen. The family still owns the company. And the founding idea, a highly digestible complete food from ingredients you can name, is still the recipe brief. Read how it is made or what we believe.
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