We, at Paws and Possibilities, are proud and excited to be selected one of the official taste-testers for treats from Chewy.com.
Chewy’s web site says this to describe their company:
Chewy.com delivers pet happiness by conveniently shipping 300+ brands of pet food and stuff (for FREE!) while celebrating and honoring the bond, love and connection we share with pets. Since I’ve ordered from them before and have been consistently pleased with their service and their products, we were happy to agree to taste-testing their treats.
Perhaps I should be more clear here. “We” as in me and the trainers at Paws and Possibilities are not taste-testing the treats! Our dogs and our clients dogs are testing them. Each month we will review one of the products that is offered online and let you know, honestly, what we think about them. Trust me, I am pretty picky when it comes to dog treats for training so we will see how this goes!
Because I am so picky, I have tended, in the past, to only feed one type of treat day in and day out. I’d vary the flavor, but the texture and consistency was always the same. I already like that I am varying the treats for training as it is just one more thing to keep things interesting for the puppies!
When I look for dog treats, I have a few things I always look for:
1) Good, high quality ingredients
2) small treats that are easy to break into even smaller pieces without causing too many crumb
3) treats that are tasty for the dogs but not too smelly for my hands. There is nothing worse than still smelling horrible dog treats on my fingers hours after I have fed them and after several times of washing my hands! I don’t care how much the dogs like them!!
When I choose what treats to test for Chewy, I will start with those things in mind.
In January, we tested 2 types of treats- Nutro peanut butter crunchy treats and Fromm Four-Star Nutritionals Liver Low Fat Dog Treats.
Verdict is in– dogs liked them both. We had about 15 different dogs try each of the treats and all the dogs liked them. Several owners told me that their dogs liked the Fromm treats better, but that’s not too surprising as many dogs go bonkers for liver! I had an issue with the Nutro dog treats if I wanted to break them. There were too many crumbs for my taste, but if you have a big enough dog that you wouldn’t need to break them, they would be a great addition to your treat variety. The Fromm treats were sometimes hard to break in half, but when I did break them in half there were not too many crumbs.
Would I buy them? Yes. But neither would replace my go-to favorite treat.
Check back for my monthly review and hopefully we will all be able to add more spice to our dog training life!
Tell me, what are your favorite treats you use for training your dog and why? Share in the comments below.