Among store brands I like: Authority Training Soft Bites and Pet Botanics Treats
Both have chicken, meat or fish as the first ingredient and are grain free. BUT, sadly all treats you can buy in stores - even the better brands - usually contain a fair amount of sugar, which I don't understand and consider unnecessary for a dog. That's why I have started to use my own homemade stuff and veggies.
Djamila loves those carrot-coconut cookies so much that once she put me through an embarrassing moment, when she was offered some other homemade cookies by someone on a charity event. She sniffed them and then went away without taking anything, while being more than willing to take some of her usual carrot-coconut treats from me a little later. I was both flattered and a little embarrassed at the same time, because the lady had just told us how much time she had spent in her kitchen on exactly those homemade treats Djamila then refused. Dogs! They're like kids. Can't make them eat it, if they don't like it ...
Baby carrots are just a little sweeter (which again also means more sugar, but at least it's the natural unprocessed sugar).
I myself like to nibble them and often share a bag with Djamila.
They can be raw, but make sure the pieces are big enough that doggie chews them. For us usually the size of a fingertip is sufficient, because Djamila is used to tiny treats.
In this case the size matter is not about calories, because carrots have very few anyways.
The important point is that dogs can hardly digest any uncooked veggies. That's why the pieces should be chewed in order to not cause blockages, stressed stomach or pain when released again. It's the same story with many fruits.
You'll find uncooked veggies/ many fruits almost intact/ a little chewed in the stools.
That's also the reason why in any homemade diet for the dog, veggies should not make a very big part (max. 30%) and why they should be cooked - so the stomach can digest them.
As treats it's ok, if they are not cooked, because that goes kind of extra anyways.
I do not even subtract the calories of baby carrots from Djamilas regular food on days she only gets carrot treats, because I know her body will hardly get any nutritional value from them.
Freaky story about uncooked veggies/ fruit:
A few weeks ago we went to the beach and Djamila found an intact coconut in the water, which she started to peel and just for fun I let her do it. It was amazing to watch her do it, ripping the fiber off an then spitting it out and grasping the next piece. She completely stripped it in no time.
So we took her trophy - the peeled coconut - home after a fair amount of play with it. I opened it and Djamila got the liquid and a few pieces of the raw coconut, cut into small dices.
I did not notice that - I think because they are harder than carrot - she hardly chewed any of the pieces. She enjoyed eating that stuff so much that I gave her quite a lot over the next two days.
On the third day she yelped a little during her #2 outside and I examined her stools in order to see, if something's wrong with them.
And look what I found: The coconut dices practically intact - lots of them. And they seemd to sit in her stomach just as a foreign body.
I immediately stopped feeding those diced and within the next days the got rid of the last dices over her stools and everything was ok again.
I will only give her ground coconut in the future. The cut pieces where a bad idea regarding the coconut.
It's not that dramatic with the carrots. Of the baby carrots I easily feed 4-5 cut count into pieces a day during training and she is fine.
But you should make sure to limit the amount of uncooked veggies and make sure the pieces are big enough that the dog will chew them in order to avoid an upset stomach or problems, such as described above.
Plain cheerios are harmless, or just a kibble of the regular dog food! You can also boil a chicken breast (microwave to dry out is optional) and cut it up into small bite size pieces. That doesn't last very long but its savory and a good source of protein! But of course carrots and green beans are a win also. Commercial dog treats in my mind are terrible, for all stages. But that's just me!
Ugh, @AmyJo, that link scared me a little. But then I ploughed through that article ... and was relieved.
I don't have to skip the baby carrots. Although I have to admit, giving it a second thought, it's quite a luxury to buy those instead of regular and fully grown carrots.
Chlorine is around us nearly everywhere today, which does not make it good stuff. Just saying, it is around everywhere. But the most important danger comes from inhaling it, as far as I know. Food, such as carrots, can easily be cleaned off the chlorine simply by washing it. Which I have been doing with the baby carrots anyways since I started buying them. And then I air-dry them, because I've found out that this way they may no longer look as fancy as they do when swimming in that watery bag. But I can keep them much longer and don't even have to put them in the fridge. It's something I've watched with the fully grown carrots, which have an amazing "best by" span when stored at room temperature in a dry environment (weeks!).
Still, I am always happy to meet people, who do care about what's going on with our food. And again, just because I do not see such a huge danger in this particular case, that does not mean that I was happy to learn, how much these veggies are processed. Honestly did not know that. But I am happy now that I always stuck to my procedure above, even without knowing that I am actually removing chlorine that way.
Thank you so much for sharing this link! One or the other may even think entirely different than me and skip the baby carrots all together in the future.
It is tough today with our food. That goes for pet food as well as human food. Once we start looking into things a little closer, sometimes horrible truths reveal themselves. And all too often we only stumble over facts coincidentally, because who has the time to question every single food item in our cart. Some things are even hidden from our sight on purpose. Because manufacturers know we would not buy the product, if we knew.
Nowadays we can barely find anything in the grocery store that is not heavily processed and preserved. If bet, if we'd start asking how manufacturers manage to make milk last about three weeks, packaged bread four weeks or longer, yogurt four weeks - which is all "unnatural" - and we would try to avoid critical ingredients or procedures altogether, there would hardly be anything left we could buy in a modern grocery store. Even fruit and vegetables are processed so much and coated in poison that on the very same shelf they sell a liquid that is supposed to help removing the residue. Simple water does not seem to do the job.
I sadly admit that to a certain degree I have decided to no longer think twice about EVERYTHING, because I am honestly afraid I could go crazy, if I did. I try to make reasonable choices for myself and my human and furry family, knowing that there are probably quite a few questionable ingredients on my table that I do not even know about.
It is sad, but also true: That seems to be the price we pay - in addition to our hard earned dollars - to have everything at hand all the time. Miraculously manufacturers today make all of that happen. Sometimes I still wonder, if my life would really be so much worse, if I had only seasonal fruit on my table and bread that only lasts a few days.
There are small differences we can make. But since the small next door grocery stores, butchers and farms have started to vanish or being swallowed by discounters and food giants and we as consumers have allowed that to happen, always only looking for variety and the best prices, we are now basically caught in this treadmill of processed food everywhere. And breaking the cycle has become incredibly hard.
Comments
I also use my dog cookies in tiny pieces for training:
http://www.bullterrierfun.com/homemade-dog-treats-carrot-coconut-mini-cookies/
Among store brands I like:
Authority Training Soft Bites
and
Pet Botanics Treats
Both have chicken, meat or fish as the first ingredient and are grain free.
BUT, sadly all treats you can buy in stores - even the better brands - usually contain a fair amount of sugar, which I don't understand and consider unnecessary for a dog.
That's why I have started to use my own homemade stuff and veggies.
By carrots you mean like just raw carrots? Does it matter if it's baby carrots or regular carrots?
But of course carrots and green beans are a win also.
Commercial dog treats in my mind are terrible, for all stages. But that's just me!
But then I ploughed through that article ... and was relieved.
I don't have to skip the baby carrots. Although I have to admit, giving it a second thought, it's quite a luxury to buy those instead of regular and fully grown carrots.
Chlorine is around us nearly everywhere today, which does not make it good stuff. Just saying, it is around everywhere. But the most important danger comes from inhaling it, as far as I know.
Food, such as carrots, can easily be cleaned off the chlorine simply by washing it.
Which I have been doing with the baby carrots anyways since I started buying them. And then I air-dry them, because I've found out that this way they may no longer look as fancy as they do when swimming in that watery bag. But I can keep them much longer and don't even have to put them in the fridge.
It's something I've watched with the fully grown carrots, which have an amazing "best by" span when stored at room temperature in a dry environment (weeks!).
Still, I am always happy to meet people, who do care about what's going on with our food.
And again, just because I do not see such a huge danger in this particular case, that does not mean that I was happy to learn, how much these veggies are processed. Honestly did not know that. But I am happy now that I always stuck to my procedure above, even without knowing that I am actually removing chlorine that way.
Thank you so much for sharing this link!
One or the other may even think entirely different than me and skip the baby carrots all together in the future.
Nowadays we can barely find anything in the grocery store that is not heavily processed and preserved.
If bet, if we'd start asking how manufacturers manage to make milk last about three weeks, packaged bread four weeks or longer, yogurt four weeks - which is all "unnatural" - and we would try to avoid critical ingredients or procedures altogether, there would hardly be anything left we could buy in a modern grocery store.
Even fruit and vegetables are processed so much and coated in poison that on the very same shelf they sell a liquid that is supposed to help removing the residue. Simple water does not seem to do the job.
I sadly admit that to a certain degree I have decided to no longer think twice about EVERYTHING, because I am honestly afraid I could go crazy, if I did.
I try to make reasonable choices for myself and my human and furry family, knowing that there are probably quite a few questionable ingredients on my table that I do not even know about.
It is sad, but also true: That seems to be the price we pay - in addition to our hard earned dollars - to have everything at hand all the time. Miraculously manufacturers today make all of that happen.
Sometimes I still wonder, if my life would really be so much worse, if I had only seasonal fruit on my table and bread that only lasts a few days.
But since the small next door grocery stores, butchers and farms have started to vanish or being swallowed by discounters and food giants and we as consumers have allowed that to happen, always only looking for variety and the best prices, we are now basically caught in this treadmill of processed food everywhere. And breaking the cycle has become incredibly hard.