Some dogs just don't want store-bought treats

I often wonder what is actually in a lot of the "treats" that we come across. I think that there is a pretty good chance that these food items are just like the Pringles of the dog food world and just like a bag of potato chips is really bad for a person, it is very believable that the dog food world would do the same thing.

It isn't something that I really thought about until recently when I was visiting some dogs that while we do look after them to a certain degree, they are too far away from our HQ for us to do much more than check in every now and then. We did sterilize and treat all of them for diseases and then we have a few spotters in the area to let us know about how they are going and make sure they are ok.

Recently I took a trip over and saw some of the more friendly ones and I loaded up a dog food bowl with a mix of rice, wet food, and dry food and also hit a treat in the mix as well.

This kind of reminds me of when you are trying to get a dog to take pills. They are somehow magically able to work around the pill consuming everything in their way other than the pill. I expect this when it comes to gross-tasting medicine, but this treat is supposed to be something special yet this dog, who lives outdoors most of the time, wasn’t interested in it at all.

This kind of opened my eyes to the fact that we don’t, and I don’t think most people, ever check the nutritional information on any sort of dog snack that we buy. The situation is a bit different for us since we are restrained by money and it should be obvious that the cheapest treats are the ones that we are most likely to buy. I started looking at the treats these days though and started finding out that a lot of them have quite high levels of fat and even worse, saturated fat.

I don’t know a great deal about what these words actually mean and I also know that fat is important not just for dogs but for all living creatures. However, a dog’s intake of fat, if you can control it, should not be more than 20% of their meal. Most dog food brands are able to do this easily but since this industry isn’t very heavily regulated, there are also a lot of brands that do not seem to put in any care as to the long term health of your pet.

While this will vary quite a lot from country to country, places like the United State or the UK will have rather strict labeling requirements for all types of food, even for dogs.

The way we look at it here in Thailand is that we really can't be too fussy because getting these dogs ANY food is better than the alternative, but if you are a conscientious dog owner, here are some key takeaways.

• There is zero benefit for your dog's food level to contain more than 30% protein. If you are doing that it's fine but watch out for the fats. High fat proteins have the same impact on dogs that they do on humans.

• You should have fats in your dog's food, but there is no benefit to going above 10%. Just over 5% is considered by many/perhaps most veterinarians, to be ideal.

• Carbs aren't as important for dogs as they are for humans. I know a ton of people that avoid carbs because of weight gain but for dogs you can go crazy with this unless your dog has a weight problem. Especially for puppies, the carb content should be above 20%

Most responsible dog food producers are aware of these things and will make the various types of dog food accordingly and this is why there is a puppy version and an adult version or even an senior version. These all look like exactly the same thing but they are quite different.

I don't think we put a great deal of effort into this at Krabi Animal Welfare because we do not have the funding to really be concerned with such things but if you have a dog or a couple of dogs at home I suppose it would be worth looking into about putting some time into the nutritional needs of a dog. I've lived most of my life just thinking dogs needed "food" and that was the end of it. It turns out they have a need for some sort of nutritional balance as well.

And some of them might just be very fussy eaters, like Mango, who absolutely refuses to eat dry dog treats. She will destroy a piece of chicken though, I'll tell you that much.

If you would like to see how you can help out or simply spread the word, please visit our website at

http://krabianimalwelfare.org