By NIC WHITE FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA
A year ago Agota Jakutyte had the world at her feet - she was acing law school with a prestigious job at the EU Parliament fighting for human rights.
She also started a glamorous modeling career when she was 14 that saw her travel to Milan, New York and Miami at just 17.
But instead of reveling in her charmed life, the 22-year-old was crying on the floor of her bathroom for reasons she could not understand.
'My body was shaking and through my tears, I barely could see anything. I lost a track of time, space and life itself,' she told Daily Mail Australia.
'You know that feeling - when you are alone, lost and frustrated from life. You don't know what to do, to whom to talk or where to go.'
Diagnosed with depression, the Lithuanian-born woman dropped out of university, quit her job, and even stopped modeling - spending her days feeling empty.
'Every single morning I felt like my hopes and dreams were stoned in my bed indefinitely,' she said.
'It was an emptiness, when you feel alone, when you feel that nobody cares and needs you, when you feel that whatever you do nobody cares.'
The once happy, bubbly young woman even considered suicide on many occasions.
'Even right now I am shivering just to remember that,' she said.
She tried yoga and saw a therapist but nothing helped, until she bonded with the abandoned stray pooch that would save her life.
Crete, an adorable black and brown mixed-breed female, helped her recover over long walks in the park and sleeping in the same bed telling stories like her father once did with her.
'I remember I was crying on the day when I took Crete from shelter, but those tears were happy ones,' Ms Jakutyte said.
'She has the compassionate eyes ever, and despite of her rounded complexity she always managed to scramble up close to me.
'Often I hugged her and felt like our hearts were beating as one.'
Filled with a renewed purpose in life, Ms Jakutyte spent months volunteering in an animal shelter, and while there were a lot of tears they helped her find what she wanted out of life.
'Month after month I spent my days with stray dogs instead of law students. But I was happy!' she said.
She and her boyfriend, who also battled depression with the help of his pug Ferdinando, now have a pack of four rescue dogs.
The other two pups are Brit the 'German Shepherd wannabe' they found tied up and starving near a cemetery, and Clemence the whippet rescued from owners who didn't want him anymore.
In May this year, Ms Jakutyte was working at the shelter so much she found it difficult to get the animal smell off skin, so she tried dog shampoo.
This gave her an idea. Horrified at the amount of toxic ingredients in pet cleaning products, she started her own line of hygiene products suitable for both pets and their human owners called SHOO X.
'Its like a carrot - you do not buy different carrot for you and your rabbit, because it is born in the same planet as you, or dog, or rabbit, or every other mammal,' she said.
All the products, which include shampoos, air fresheners, detergent, scrubbers and cleaning liquid, are made with all-natural ingredients and part of their sales are donated to animal shelters.
Ms Jakutyte and her boyfriend built the company with their savings as it was months before they convinced retailers to give them a go.
Now she wants to expand the business and has started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the development of new products.
'We want to save people time and minimise their life - the less things in your life, the more space in your head to think about better things,' she said.
Ms Jakutyte is also excited about building a customer base in Australia, where she sees huge potential for her products.
'Australians really liked our products. One distributor even considered opening new department for pet products just because of our products and our story,' she said.
'There are a lot of dog owners in Australia as it is a very outdoors country, and like many others people are very interested in natural products.'
SHOO Collection: https://www.reussiintl.com/collections/shoo
