Bakery Chain’s Wares Are a Hit With Spot

It’s the foreign tourists who are the most puzzled.

“Espresso,” they’ll tell Debbie Deem. Then they’ll gesture to one of the elegant little pastries in her display case.

No, no, no, she tells them. They’re for dogs. You know, dogs? Woof-woof? Dogs!

Ah, nod the tourists. Dogs. A bakery for dogs. An entire patisserie for man’s best friend. Those petits fours, those little cakes, those frosted biscotti: for dogs, and for dogs only. And, worse, no espresso!

When she cruises up the coast each morning from her Camarillo home, Deem knows someone will mistakenly wander into her shop looking for human sustenance. But there are plenty of other places that feed the inner man.

The Three Dog Bakery feeds the inner dog.

I have read about such phenomena, of course:. Haute cuisine for Bowser. Therapists for Mr. Fluffy. Poochie Gucci.

But you don’t get the full impact until you stand eyeball-to-buttermilk-yogurt-filling with case after case of confections for canines.

That’s why on the first Independence Day of the new millennium, I strolled into the Santa Barbara shop owned by Deem and two partners. When the Founding Fathers pondered the pursuit of happiness, I thought, they couldn’t have been thinking about dog pastries, or $42 doggie Hawaiian shirts, or the dog birthday parties that Deem stages from time to time.

“We celebrate the bond between people and their pets,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

At parties, Deem has strapped pointy hats on as many as six pooches at a time. She puts them through the paces of a game called “Musical Mats,” played to the strains of “La Bamba.” At the end, they all scarf down birthday cake and go back home with their delighted, camera-toting owners.

No, the Founding Fathers couldn’t have had this in mind. After a furious debate about states’ rights, James Madison never asked Thomas Jefferson and his mutt over for a doggie birthday: “Tom, you get Ben Franklin and his hound, and George and his sheep dog, and I’ll bring the Alpo and a cask of wine! Ol’ Blue will just love it!”

I asked Deem the obvious question and she rolled her eyes.

She hears it time and again: When people are homeless, and sick, and starving, and miserable in a million ways, how can you devote yourself to creating cunning little pastries . . . for dogs?

Isn’t this, I asked her, like a scene from the days of the the French Revolution: “Pardonez-moi madame, but can you spare a sou for my tattered family in the tuberculosis ward? They’ve had nothing to eat in three days and, oh, I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you from purchasing a Napoleon for your little Phydeau, and yes, I know you must be on your way . . . .”

In the nicest way, Deem told me to get real.

“There are restaurants here that sell $60 steaks and $120 bottles of wine,” she said. “I don’t hear anyone protesting about that. This is hardly the fall of civilization as we know it.”

In fact, the trifles offered at Three Dog seem highly civilized, by today’s nutritional standards: No salt, sugar, chemicals, artificial preservatives, chocolate, or, God save our little puppies, animal fat. There are wheat-free treats, too, for dogs who have issues with wheat.

Deem remembers the mother who came in with a dog and two boys whining for sweets. The dog got a carob-chip cookie--a kind of dog biscuit dipped in a chocolate substitute. So did each boy.

The prices are also reasonably civilized, ranging from three cookies for $1.50 to decorated whole-wheat cakes for $22. In a city where the cost of a modest house can bankrupt your average neurosurgeon, three for $1.50 seems pretty good for pastries, for your dog.

Customers sometimes bring their dogs in and set them up at Deem’s “doggie bar” for a quick nosh. Other regulars come in without pets; a few have lost dogs recently and come to grieve.

Health-conscious, caring, spontaneous: Three Dog Bakery would be quintessentially Californian, if it weren’t a product of the health-conscious, caring, spontaneous Midwest. It’s part of a 30-store chain based in Kansas City, Mo.

“The first time I saw one, it was magical,” said Deem, a dog lover who helps out various rescue groups. “I knew I would want to start my own business some day and that it would have to do with animals.”

For two decades, Deem was a victims’ advocate for various law enforcement agencies. Until a few weeks ago, she worked for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

She speaks passionately about innocents whose lives have been shattered by crime, about people who have been terrorized by white-collar criminals and ignored by the system that’s supposed to protect them.

“I have a soft spot for the underdog,” she says, without a hint of irony.

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.