What do healthy dog treats look like and smell like?
Recently we had an email from a customer who didn’t like how our healthy and natural dog treats smelt, they claimed various things about the odour but here is the shocking truth.
Most dogs fed on a grain diet (ie 97% of domestic dogs) can have trouble recognising their primary food (meat) as an actual food source. No longer allowed to hunt, no longer given meat on a regular basis, many dogs can even suffer digestion problems when eating real meat for the first time. EVEN THOUGH it is more bio available to the dog than any other food source.
While we sell many Blackdog products and many of them are the same size, shape and colour each time, the main difference between them and many dog treats on the market are that they are 80% plus meat composed. This is the kind of treat that most dog owners seem to prefer because they live in a MacDonald’s world where every parcel of ‘food’ must look the same and match that in the advert exactly (well most burgers don’t but that is another point).
NATURAL meat based dog treats look different
The simple fact is that a 100% meat based product, be it chicken, kangaroo, beef or fish, will vary by as much as the original animals vary in that species. Not only will the colours and texture of the meat jerky’s appear different in most batches, but so can the smell and any other sense characteristic.
We have also been noticing a lot of oily residue on beef liver and roo tendons and roo jerky lately. What some dog owners (often the ones that only feed pellets to their dogs) can have difficulty understanding that this is NATURAL oil of the animal and not excess oil. Not fake oil, not vegetable oil. The oil is not purposely added for flavour to trick the dog into eating the treat, like many of our grain based dog treats competitors do. In fact, without an oily (often not even animal oil) layer spread over kibble or grain dog treats, most dogs would not eat the product. But our oil is just as natural on the dog treat as the meat protein inside of it!
You will also notice that some of our treats take on a slight plastic smell, because they are packed in a plastic to maintain freshness and stop oil rubbing off on your hands. The manufacturers of these treats have been running these businesses for decades and know how to handle their products. Just because a bone or jerky doesn’t smell exactly the same on each order does not mean it is defective, it usually means that it is 100% natural and will naturally vary from season to season and even with different breeds of the animal being used (such as in beef or kangaroo dog treats).
It is true that some treats can ‘go off’ and in the case of dog food in America some of that grain-based kibble can really harm dogs – but so far we have had no issues with our products – because they are natural and the manufacturer knows how to properly dry and treat their natural dog treats.
If you know something is visibly and scent wise off, and your dog doesn’t like to eat it, then of course you know not to force your dog to eat it. But as many people who walk their dogs off lead at the beach know, many dogs will eat the rotten bird and fish carcasses and drink salt water until they are sick or they have diarrhoea. The dog’s digestions system is geared to be high acid content and to extract nutrients fast and to expel waste fast. But they choose what they want to eat often based on scent alone.
The manufacturers of healthy dog treat, and our company always strive to find and provide the safest most healthy meat based dog treats in Australia. This is the bedrock of our company and what we feed our own dogs. Please understand that our treats are healthy and vary in shape and form and dont all smell like freshly cooked steaks, they are after all, dried meats.