A feed company, a checkerboard and a soldier’s word.

Dog Chow takes its name from the vocabulary of a farm-feed company. The Gale company history of Purina Mills, published in the International Directory of Company Histories, says the business began in 1894 in St. Louis as the Robinson-Danforth Commission Company, founded by George Robinson, Will Andrews and William Danforth to make horse and mule feed. A whole-wheat cereal sold from 1898 as Purina Whole Wheat Cereal, and then renamed for a health writer known as Dr. Ralston, gave the company its two names, and in 1902 it became the Ralston Purina Company.

The checkerboard came the same year. Gale says Danforth wanted Purina products to be easy to pick out and remembered a family from his boyhood in Charleston, Missouri, who visited his father’s general store each Saturday in clothes made from one bolt of red-and-white checkerboard cloth. He put the pattern on his packaging, and it spread through the company: checkerboard ties and coats for Danforth, a “Checker Gallery” of staff photographs, an annual Checker Day, and a headquarters known as Checkerboard Square. English Wikipedia dates the trademark to 1902, citing a 1964 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

The word “chow” followed the First World War. According to Gale, Danforth served in France as a YMCA secretary with the Third Army Division and noticed that soldiers called their rations “chow” and seemed to warm to the word more than to “food”. On his return he substituted “chow” for “feed” on all of Purina’s animal products and set up the company’s Chow Division, which later became the subsidiary Purina Mills. English Wikipedia lists the result as a family of names for each animal, among them Horse Chow, Rabbit Chow, Pig Chow and Dog Chow.

The dog food sits in that line of names. Gale says that in the 1920s, after Danforth’s son Donald persuaded him to build a research facility near Gray Summit, Missouri, Purina began making a commercial pet food used mainly for hunting dogs and working farm dogs. Nestlé’s brand page, as cited by English Wikipedia, dates Dog Chow to 1926.

From feed stores to grocery shelves, then to Nestlé.

The move into grocery stores came under the second generation. Gale says William Danforth retired in 1932 and handed the business to Donald, who added mills across the country during the Depression. Under Donald Danforth’s leadership, the history continues, Ralston Purina developed a new commercial pet food to be sold through grocery outlets: Purina Dog Chow, which went into national distribution in 1957. Gale says the launch of Dog Chow, and later of Cat Chow, strengthened the company’s place in the grocery trade, and that Donald Danforth retired in 1963.

The name grew into a family. English Wikipedia’s article on the brand lists Puppy Chow alongside the original dog food, and Cat Chow and Kitten Chow as companion products for cats. The Nestlé Purina PetCare article records that in the mid-1970s Cat Chow began its “Chow-Chow-Chow” television campaign, in which cats appeared to dance to the music,, with variations running for years afterwards.

Feed and pet food later went separate ways. Gale records that in 1986 Ralston Purina sold Purina Mills, its animal-feed business, to British Petroleum, keeping the pet food lines, and that both companies went on using the checkerboard in the United States. English Wikipedia adds that the feed businesses still use the Purina and Chow names under licence.

Ownership of the dog food changed in 2001. Forbes reported on 16 January 2001 that Nestlé had agreed to buy St. Louis-based Ralston Purina, which it described as the maker of Puppy Chow, Dog Chow and Meow Mix, and that Nestlé’s US Friskies business would be merged into Ralston’s organisation in St. Louis. English Wikipedia, citing the Associated Press, says Nestlé Purina PetCare was formed in December 2001 when the purchase was completed. Nestlé has owned Dog Chow since 2001, and the business remains headquartered in St. Louis.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all sell food for cats, dogs and other household pets. Pet food reaches its buyer through a small set of familiar formats: the printed paper or plastic bag of dry kibble, the steel or aluminium can of wet food, the foil pouch and the cardboard multipack, each stacked in long rows on a supermarket or pet-shop shelf where many rival names sit side by side.

On a crowded aisle, a pet-food brand’s identity is carried mostly by its pack. The front panel usually pairs a wordmark with a photograph or illustration of an animal, a band of colour that separates one recipe or life stage from another, and a short line naming the flavour. The same logo may be adapted for a tall bag, a squat can lid and a small pouch, so its shape, colour and lettering have to hold together at very different sizes and on different materials.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the name, who owns it now, and how its labels and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A checkerboard, a borrowed word and a puppet dog.

Dog Chow’s identity is built from two pieces that predate the dog food itself. The checkerboard came from a remembered bolt of cloth in 1902, and the word “Chow” from army slang after the First World War. Gale ties both to Purina’s feeds for farm animals.

Television gave the brand a character in the early 1960s. English Wikipedia says Rowlf the Dog was introduced in 1962 as the spokesman of Purina Dog Chow television commercials aired in Canada, appearing alongside Baskerville the Hound. The Jim Henson Company’s archive blog, Jim Henson’s Red Book, said in 2014 that after meeting the puppet builder Don Sahlin in 1960, Jim Henson hired him two years later to help build two dogs for a Purina commercial, Rowlf and Baskerville, and then asked him to join Muppets Inc. full time. Wikipedia records that Rowlf went on to appear on The Jimmy Dean Show from 1963 to 1966 and on The Muppet Show.

The checkerboard also had a public life beyond the packaging. English Wikipedia records that while Ralston Purina owned the St. Louis Blues hockey team, from 1977 to 1983, the St. Louis Arena was renamed the Checkerdome after the company logo, and that a beginners’ area at the Keystone ski resort in Colorado, bought by the company in 1974, still bears the name Checkerboard Flats.

For a design guide, Dog Chow shows how a product name can come from a company’s house vocabulary rather than from the product, and how a pattern chosen for packaging in 1902 can follow a dog food onto grocery shelves and into television. Compare it with Beneful, another Nestlé Purina dog food, and Purina Pro Plan, another Ralston Purina line now owned by Nestlé. For this guide we use checker red, checker white and grain gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Dog Chow’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.