Gourmet dog treats, do you think its all about price or colouring?
Yet overwhelmingly the images and sites pulled up by google for ‘gourmet dog treats‘ equate to flour and sugar treats for dogs. Shouldn’t GOURMET mean something that is good for a dog and that they don’t normally get? IF so, then grain would never be gourmet!
I don’t completely dismiss wheat flour in a dogs diet, because its mostly 70% worth of all dog foods on the planet, but I question why you would consider more of the same, with even more colouring and additives to be considered gourmet for a dog.
If gourmet means artificial, or additive, or great unnatural colours, then Google has gotten it right. But in my experience of people coming to our healthy dog treat site, we find that people tend to be more concerned about any additives and even human grade colouring used in dog treats, than actively seeking out that kind of thing.
Does Gourmet dog treats mean dog bakeries?
I concede that we sell many different variants of dog biscuit ‘flavours’ by blackdog on our website in bulk 5 Kg biscuit boxes, but these are mostly under the bulk biscuit sub category, not the focus of our site. And the other big difference is that like many cheap soda drinks on the market, many of the alleged gourmet dog treats use artificial flavours or a trace element of what the biscuit is called. Whereas Blackdog tend to use an array of natural flavours (ie ingredients) to give the real flavour to their biscuits.
These makers of artificial, wheat based “gourmet” dog treats, can easily get under a person’s guard who doesn’t spend a lot of time researching and analysing a genuinely healthy dog diet – which is meat based.
We do not suggest banning all dog biscuits, but always advise if you don’t feed your dog a raw meat diet, Or meat based dog treats, that you use biscuits sparingly as you are only adding more wheat to an already wheat based dog diet.
As an example how some site try and garner your approval and patronage consider this statement “vet approved, low fat, high protein recipes”. Please understand that:
1 most vet courses have a low dog nutrition component, some courses are sponsored by dog food companies, and most vets make substantial money from selling you wheat based dog food. Don’t expect any treats or dog food from a vet to be high in meat content. Large corporations supplying the regular outlets maximise profits by minimising meat.
2 Low fat is important if your dog has a disease requiring low fat. Or if you don’t walk your dog regularly. Animal fat is an important energy nutrient for dogs. NOT vegetable fat. It is true that rather than get Omega 6 via sunflower oil you can use meat based oils sources of Omega 6 like ‘poultry’ or ‘eggs’ but these are often used as a whole meal. Omega 6 sunflower oil is one of the rare concessions we give for dog plant intakes.
Our treats have natural animal fat in them, at the level that they are naturally found in the source animal. Beef and chicken are around 10%. Roo and fish are around 2-4 % fat. It is preferable that you use meat based dog treats as naturally as you can with the fat level that is natural, not skimmed off, because again carnivore dogs use fat for more than just energy.
3 Phrases like ” high protein recipes” means little if you are talking about wheat, because grains are not ‘bio available’ to dogs. High protein is good for most dogs if you are talking about meat sources, because dog food uses so much grain typically that you only get a little amount of meat based protein in dog food. Essential amino acids (ie protein) from meat sources, is the most important reason why people should use meat based dog treats as a food supplement – NOT protein from any source (ie NOT from plants).
If you want proper dog development and want to keep your dog’s weight down, feeding them excess wheat makes no sense at all. Gourmet dog treats UNFORTUNATELY now means finding the rare sources of meat dog treats, like us.