Alaskan baked canine cookies fetch worldwide attention.

• Author: Sullivan, Patty
• Position: Alaska Canine Cookies, Inc.

At the new shop, whole wheat flour sacks are heaped next to a mixer. Two racks of stacked Cookie sheetS stand at attention for the next day's bake. A new convection oven is on the way. Cookie production could reach a thousand pounds a day, Shawn Horner says, determined to have product in every state.

When Shawn Horner first pitched her dog cookie dream to a bank, the loan officer answered only to her husband. When she rang large wholesalers for mix-ups on ingredients, no one called back.

Undeterred, she continued wiping flour from her brow and churning out 50 pounds of dog snacks, blended with honey and eggs, baked from her home oven in Eagle River. Now nearly three years later, the lone baker has turned top-dog manufacturer.

No longer is bubble wrap strewn about her living room. No longer are her pets walking up the stairs with labels stuck to their tails. Outside a new 2,000-square-foot bakery in south Anchorage, her black Mercedes is parked all day, seven days a week.

With over 250 wholesale clients, including two contracts with nationwide stores, Alaska Canine Cookies, Inc. distributes to 38 states and four different countries. Her catch phrase, "Baked in Alaska for the whole doggone world," is becoming less boast. Growth in sales registered 322 percent last year, her second year in business; and now, just more than half a year later, it has spiked to 350 percent, she says.

At 31, Horner runs a biscuit business that is cranking out a quarter million dollars in gross sales. By the year 2001, she plans on making the million dollar mark.

Decorative doggy bags and wooden gift crates of cookies appear everywhere - in Anchorage at Costco, Carrs, and soon in every Mapco. With names like "Puppy Pipeline" and "Carob'bou Bones," the handsomely packaged product is fetching customers.

Now people not only rerum calls, they knock on her door. Even the organizers of the Iditarod, the world-renowned 1,049 mile sled dog race from Anchorage to Nome, want in on her dog dough. The Iditarod Trail Committee just awarded Homer a licensing agreement to bake the first official Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race dog cookie.

"There isn't a better compliment...