What are meat based dog treats? And why buy them.

If you search on google for meat dog treats you might find that the top of the page is dominated by google adwords advertising, and on my search I found an advert for something called: Doggie Treats Beef 300g

The first thing you should be alerted to is that these treats are BISCUITS – and by definition biscuits are not mainly meat, they are mainly grain.

The next claim of beef flavoured Treats does not mean that it is a MEAT DOG TREAT. Not only do we not know if the beef is real beef or artificial flavoured chemicals, but the first ingredient listed is calcium, plus some general “human grade ingredients”. It is very safe to say that these biscuits are not a meat dog treat.

Another site (second advert) I visited had no ingredient list on their site, but they did have a carob coated biscuit, a “lamington” a rawhide kebab, rocky road, and doughnuts!  No, seriously! A dog treat site that gets you onto their site for a meat based treat (that has not ingredients) but has many other products with everything BUT meat as the major ingredient of the treats is dubious to say the least.

I don’t treat my dog like they are at a kids birthday party. The sparkles might impress a toddler, but selling these kinds of junk to a dog and a dog owner is unconscionable.  There is a difference between giving the public “what they want”, tricking the public or giving the public stuff that is clearly unhealthy for their dogs.

Unfortunately there are no dog treat police. And since the “specialists” tasked with making dog food are happy to mostly feed dogs grain and carbs rather than meat, you are not going to get the dog treat police.

Beef liver is one of the best dog treats around, packed with nutrition, but too much can give a dog the runs and it has very little fibre in it. It is a recall treat and almost every dog treat company on earth makes it, so it is a low cost ingredient and a cheap commodity of a dog treat. That is why people call this treat which is actually an offal, a meat dog treat and sell it as a loss leader (underpriced on the internet) to lure people to their stores, so you buy much prettier looking junk dog treats.

Just like any market in the world, the dog treat market is full of misleading claims. And as a rule there is very little meat in the average dog treat – and this is why the leading companies try and get the domestic dog reclassified as an omnivore like humans – to convince you its ok to by cheap rubbish for your dog.  And this is why the “average” dog treat is very below average as far as a dog treat nutrition goes.

Our philosophy is that dogs are carnivores (well that is more fact than philosophy) and that dogs only get a small proportion of meat in their man made dog food, so the dog treats should address this by providing a very high level of quality meat to a dog. 

That would justify what some people consider to be a relatively high price (for buying real meat based dog treats) and would provide amazing quality MEAT protein benefits to their dog. But because the supermarket shelves are full of treats made by the same people who give you low meat based dog food, you are very unlikely to get decent nutrition dog treats through your supermarket.