Heska Brand Guidelines: Paravax, a Lakota “White Mountain” Name & Mars

A parasitologist, a venture capitalist and three employees.

Heska began in 1988 as Paravax. Its founders were Robert Grieve, a professor of parasitology at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and Barr Dolan, a venture capitalist with Charter Ventures, according to the Gale International Directory of Company Histories, whose entry on the company runs to 2001. Dolan supplied the funding and Grieve the scientific expertise. The name reflected the plan: to use molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology and genetic engineering to develop vaccines against parasites of companion and farm animals, at a time when, the directory notes, most animal vaccine work dealt with viral and bacterial infections. The company started with three employees.

Dolan set the firm up in Mountain View, California, but in 1991 it moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, to be closer to Grieve and to the university’s research facilities. In October 1990 Paravax had signed a research, development and licensing agreement with Maboy Corporation, a subsidiary of Bayer USA, to work on a toxoplasmosis vaccine for cats, with Maboy financing the research and Paravax receiving royalties. Grieve left the university in 1994 to join the company as chief scientific officer.

In 1995 Paravax changed its name to Heska, which the directory says is a Lakota word meaning “white mountain,” chosen because the company sat near the Rocky Mountains. New venture funding that year came from Volendam Investeringen and Charter Ventures, and in April 1995 the company signed a licensing agreement with Atrix Laboratories to develop a periodontal product for companion animals.

From vaccines to diagnostics for pets.

The first product revenues arrived in 1996, the directory says, the year Heska bought Diamond Animal Health, a federally licensed biological and pharmaceutical manufacturing site in Des Moines, Iowa, and doubled its research staff, spreading across five buildings in the Fort Collins area. In July 1997 it became a public company on Nasdaq. The same year it expanded in Europe and the US: it bought Bloxham Laboratories in the UK, took an interest in CMG Centre Médical des Grand’Places in Switzerland, set up Heska AG in Basel to manage European operations, acquired the allergy researcher Astarix and Center Laboratories of Port Washington, New York, and took a stake in Sensor Devices of Waukesha, Wisconsin, a maker of monitoring instruments that it owned outright from March 1998 as Heska Waukesha.

The work then shifted towards diagnostics. In July 1998 the US Department of Agriculture approved Solo Step FH, a one-step heartworm test for cats used at the point of care, and Heska signed an exclusive agreement with i-STAT Corporation to market a portable blood analyser for animals. After a restructuring announced in late 1998, Grieve became chief executive on 1 January 1999, operations in Wisconsin were consolidated into Fort Collins and Des Moines, and Heska narrowed its focus to products for companion animals. It sold its UK diagnostic laboratory and Center Laboratories, and licensed some allergen technology to other companies for human use.

New lines followed. Heska launched Solo Step CH, a heartworm test for dogs, in 1999 and began selling the Flu Avert I.N. equine influenza vaccine that December after USDA approval. In 2000 it presented its Allercept system for allergy testing in companion animals and worked with Ralston Purina on a food for diabetic cats, sold by Purina to vets. In January 2001 Novartis Animal Health took exclusive rights to sell Heska’s E-Screen test in Europe, with allergy products made at CMG Heska in Fribourg, Switzerland, the directory says.

Design and documentation.

Animal health companies speak to several audiences at once: veterinarians in clinics, farmers and producers, and the owners of dogs and cats. Their imagery tends to follow those audiences. A vet examining a dog or a cat on a consulting-room table is one of the most familiar scenes, alongside cattle in a barn, pigs in a pen and flocks of poultry, often shown with the people who look after them.

The products themselves are less photogenic, so the same few objects recur: vaccine vials, syringes, blister packs of tablets, spot-on pipettes and collars, along with laboratory benches, protective clothing and production lines. Many companies in the sector make both medicines for pets and vaccines for livestock, and their websites usually split the range by species rather than by product.

The sector also meets its customers in person. Trade fairs and congresses such as the VMX veterinary conference in Orlando and the World Veterinary Congress are where companies launch products, run booths and sponsor talks, and their stands carry much of the same photography of animals, clinics and farms.

Many of these companies also present themselves through the idea of One Health, which links the health of people, animals and the environment, and through the language of independence, family control or shared ownership where it applies. Ceva, for example, uses the slogan “Together, beyond animal health,” while Virbac points to the family that still controls it. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company: who founded it, who owns it and where it works.

Inside Mars Petcare since 2023.

Heska ceased to be an independent company in 2023. On 3 April 2023 Heska and Mars, Incorporated announced an agreement for Mars to acquire it, and on 13 June 2023 Mars announced that the acquisition was complete, in a release now carried on the website of Antech, the Mars diagnostics business. Heska became part of the Science & Diagnostics division of Mars Petcare. In the same release Mars described itself as a global, family-owned business whose pet care names include Royal Canin, Pedigree and Whiskas, with a network of pet hospitals and diagnostic services that includes Antech, Banfield, VCA and AniCura. The release describes that division’s veterinary diagnostics business as “Antech with Heska,” spanning point-of-care laboratory instruments and consumables, rapid tests, digital cytology, software, reference laboratories, imaging and telemedicine.

The Heska web address now forwards to the in-house diagnostics page of Antech Diagnostics, which in November 2026 listed the Element series of chemistry, haematology, blood-gas and electrolyte, immunoassay and coagulation analysers alongside HeskaView, which covers cloud and practice software and digital cytology consultations with board-certified clinical pathologists. The Heska name now lives on in HeskaView, and the company no longer has a website of its own.

For a design guide, Heska shows how a name chosen for a landscape, the Rocky Mountains near Fort Collins, can carry a research start-up through a public listing and into a larger group. Compare IDEXX, another veterinary diagnostics company, and Zoetis. For this guide we use a range blue, a foothill sage and a snowfield grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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