TWENTY-EIGHT AND Counting.
Between the founders of Stray Oak there have been twenty-eight foster failures.
It usually starts the same way. A dog arrives as a temporary guest. The plan is simple: give them a place to land until the right family comes along.
Sometimes that happens. Sometimes the dog stays.
And plenty of others along the way.
We fostered long enough to understand how many animals are waiting for someone to give them a chance.
We also saw the people who make that work possible, the shelters, the volunteers, the rescue organizations doing it day after day.
His name is Whiskey.
One of those dogs was a golden retriever named Whiskey. He had been adopted from the Montgomery County Humane Society and eventually took up residence at a liquor store in Washington, D.C.
Whiskey treated the shop like it was his job. He greeted everyone who walked through the door like they were the person he had been waiting for all day. People came in for bourbon and ended up staying to talk because a dog brought them together.
At some point the idea became obvious. If we were going to build a spirits company, it should support the work that already shaped our lives.
So that's what we built.
A bourbon that pays its way back to the dogs who started it.