(FORTUNE Small Business) – When the Discovery channel's television show Animal Planet unveiled its line of pet food products at a Chicago trade show in October 2004, the real surprise was that all 35 of the tasty consumables on display were made by tiny Castor & Pollux Pet Works from Portland, Ore. Why would a national television network entrust its merchandising to a relatively unknown ten-person company? While particularly evangelical consumers helped, it was Castor & Pollux's passion for pet chow that tipped the scales. Kristina Griffin, the then-licensing manager of Discovery Consumer Products, says the network green-lighted the partnership because of "how gung ho Castor & Pollux was about the products."

That devotion to animals' every gastronomic need has paid off. In June 2003, Castor & Pollux introduced the first-ever 70%-organic pet food, Organix, which quickly accounted for 50% of the company's sales and helped push revenues to more than $1 million in 2004, double the year before. Ultramix, the first dry pet food with a resealable package of raw fruits and vegetables inside every bag, was launched in early 2004. And with the company's partnership with Animal Planet bringing national exposure, revenues are projected to top $5 million in 2005. "They are really setting the trends for producing high-quality pet foods," says Michelle Schnoor, western regional marketing manager for Wild Oats Markets, a large buyer of Castor & Pollux's products.

It may look like an overnight-success story, but Castor & Pollux's owners, Shelley Gunton, 47, and Brian Connolly, 48, have traveled a long road. In 1985, Gunton and Connolly were transferred to Hong Kong by the Royal Bank of Canada. The only catch: Joey, the couple's beloved pointer-lab mix, would have to be held in quarantine for six months, the then--British colony's precaution against rabies.

The 50 or so dogs in quarantine at the time were fed Hong Kong's basic pet diet: table scraps and ground horsemeat. But Joey, raised by his doting owners on nothing but the good stuff, did not take well to the new diet. "You could really see a deterioration in his skin and coat, which is when we started our hunt for better food," says Gunton.

The couple could find nothing in Hong Kong that measured up to Joey's customary diet, Iams dog food. So they began ordering crates of bagged pet food from an Iams distributor in Singapore, much of which they resold to the other expatriate pet owners they met in quarantine. "Here we are in our nice living room with stacks of dog food all over the place," Gunton recalls.

They reserved evenings for pet food deliveries. After getting home from work, they would jot down the addresses left on their answering machine and lug 40-pound bags down in the elevator to pile into the backseat of their Toyota. As more and more nights became devoted to deliveries, the couple realized they had a business.

They eventually persuaded the Iams senior vice president for international sales to stop in Hong Kong to discuss their proposal for a Hong Kong distributorship. It was a go in early 1988. The business took off more quickly than the couple anticipated, and both eventually quit their jobs.

The marketing plan, to promote Iams as the very best pet food available, paid off in prestige-conscious Hong Kong. The couple ran ads picturing a beautiful dog luxuriating in the backseat of a convertible Rolls-Royce, a bag of Iams at its side. In addition, they learned and honored local superstitions. They were careful to get a business telephone number containing threes and eights, which are considered lucky numbers. They eschewed an Iams promotion offering clocks as premiums after learning that giving clocks as gifts is considered bad form in Hong Kong. (The Chinese word for "clock" sounds like the word for "death.")

Iams was impressed by the couple's mounting sales and enlarged their territory to include South Korea and Taiwan. Pet food's profitability sparked interest in, of all places, Hong Kong's underworld. "We got wind of a company that was bringing in Iams from the States, knowing full well that it was undercutting us," says Gunton.

The couple hired a Chinese detective to get the scoop on the company. It turned out to be connected to the triads, mafia-like secret societies. With a hidden camera, the detective talked his way into a triad warehouse, clicking the shutter near the dog food bags. Suspecting something fishy, the warehouse's owners told Gunton and Connolly to back off—or else. But with the numbers on the bags, the Iams company was able to trace the U.S. dealers selling to the Hong Kong gangsters and put an end to it.

In 1993 the couple returned to North America and took over an Iams distributorship in Portland. But when Iams was sold to Procter & Gamble in 2000, they decided to start from scratch and founded Castor & Pollux Pet Works. (Castor and Pollux are the fictional "spokespets," named after the twin brothers and patron deities of voyagers from Greek mythology.) In a touch of sweet irony capping their own voyage, they recently received a letter from a distributor, who wrote, "We think there's a opportunity here in Hong Kong for your pet food."

"Whew!" says Connolly. "This sounds familiar!"