Is A Puppy Treat Different Than A Dog Treat?

Is there a big difference between a puppy treat and a dog treat? While your dog may gobble up both kinds, there are some important differences.

What’s in a Dog Treat?

Are you wondering what the difference is between dog treats and puppy treats? Are they the same thing? Unfortunately they are not the same thing, although often times the two terms are used interchangeably. A dog treat is actually a dried out biscuit-based chewable supplement for dogs, much like human snack food.

Dog treat recipes use dry ingredients to make them taste better. The ingredients generally include a little bit of salt and some sort of sugar substitute. They also may include some sort of preservatives such as BHT or BHA. These ingredients are added to help the treat last longer and retain more flavor for the dog’s chewing pleasure. You want your dog to have enough of this treat to make it feel satisfied, but not too much so that he starts to have problems with digestion.

A Puppy Treat Is Different

There are also food industry jokes about how dogs just love their people treats, and this leads to people referring to them as dog treats. It’s kind of funny when you think about it because they are a food product. One could refer to them as dog slobbers if they wanted to. It seems odd to lump the whole food industry together under one term, but the fact is that these small meals come in handy when your pooch is in training of some kind.

Puppy snacks are always being criticized as poor quality dog treats and it is because of things like by-products. By-products are materials left over from processing the meat and poultry products. Many puppy foods come from the store because of a high-quality meat that can’t be found elsewhere or isn’t available locally at the time. The food industry will save money on the high-quality meat and put it in a cheaper edible form, which they call by-products, to help lower the cost of manufacturing the product.

Check Those Ingredients Carefully

Pet owners love to buy dog treats for their furry friends, but they don’t usually think to look for what goes into them. There are usually cardboard, which has been soaked with grease, and even urine for some products, like dog treats made with dog paws. There could be chemicals and things of that nature used in the packaging. Some dog treats are still okay to give to a dog as a treat, but check the label carefully before giving it to your pooch. It would be horrible to give him a chocolate treat for Christmas and not even know what the chocolate was for!

If you want to give your pup healthy snacks, you need to make sure you are getting a healthy product yourself. Many pet parents have very high expectations for their pets and they are not necessarily aware of what goes into the dog treats they purchase. Many of these treats, especially the wheat-based ones, are loaded with unhealthy ingredients that may harm your dog. When you read the labels on the web, you will see there are many healthy options that you can choose from, such as wheat-free dog treats.