Dog treats: the calories that add up, and the ones that cause real harm

Quick answer

The bowl is usually measured. Everything given outside the bowl usually is not.

Almost no dog gets fat from one big meal. Dogs get fat from a drip of small, unremembered extras given by several people who each believe they gave almost nothing.

The fix is not willpower. It is accounting. Once every item that goes into the dog is counted against one daily total, the problem usually solves itself without anyone feeling mean.

• The usual veterinary guideline is that treats should stay under about a tenth of the day's calories, and the rest should come from a complete diet.
• Body size changes everything. The same biscuit is trivial for a large breed and significant for a small one.
• Chews and dental sticks are food, not accessories, and they are often the largest single hidden item.
• Some treats are dangerous at any size. Grapes and raisins, xylitol, onion family foods, macadamia and cooked bone are the ones that put dogs in hospital.
• If a dog is gaining weight on a diet that has not changed, rule out disease before assuming it is the treats.

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Sugar-free products containing xylitol, sometimes labelled as birch sugar or E967, are dangerous to dogs in very small amounts.

It triggers a rapid, severe drop in blood sugar and can cause liver failure. It appears in sugar-free peanut butter, chewing gum, mints, some dental products, protein bars and some baked goods. Peanut butter is the trap, because it is the single most common thing owners put in a lick mat or use to hide a tablet. Read the ingredients on every jar before it goes near a dog, every time you buy a new one, because manufacturers change formulations.
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Decide in 60 seconds

Why a tenth is the number

The guideline exists for a reason that has nothing to do with waistlines.

A complete dog food is formulated so that the intended daily portion delivers the full set of nutrients. Every calorie that arrives from a treat instead of the bowl is a calorie that carries no guaranteed vitamin, mineral or amino acid content.

If treats supply a small share, the dilution is irrelevant. If they supply a third of the day's energy, the dog is eating a diet that is no longer balanced, even if its weight is fine.

That matters most in growing puppies, where skeletal development depends on getting calcium, phosphorus and energy in the right proportions, and it matters in large-breed puppies most of all, because their skeletons are least forgiving of excess energy and mineral imbalance.

For an adult dog on a stable weight, the practical version is simpler. Decide the day's total, then decide how it is split between bowl and hand. What comes out of the hand comes off the bowl.

Where the calories actually hide

Measuring the meal in grams is the only way to know what a treat is being subtracted from.

Long-lasting chews.

Dental sticks, rawhide, pizzles, pig ears, filled bones and hide rolls are dense, dry and concentrated. For a small dog, one of these can represent a large fraction of the day's energy. Owners rarely count them because they feel like an activity rather than a food.

Whatever the tablets are hidden in.

Cheese, pate, sausage and peanut butter are common pill vehicles, and they are among the most calorie-dense foods in the house. A dog on twice-daily medication may be getting two extra portions of high-fat food every day, indefinitely.

Lick mats and stuffed toys.

Excellent enrichment, and easy to overfill. The contents count. Fill them from the dog's own daily ration wherever possible.

Training.

Training treats are usually small, and training sessions are usually short, so this is normally minor. It stops being minor with a dog doing many repetitions daily, or when a treat marketed as a training treat is the size of a biscuit.

Other people.

The second walker, a neighbour, a family member who disagrees with the plan, and children who feed under the table. This is the single most common reason an apparently strict diet fails.

The plate.

Toast crusts, the end of a yoghurt, the last of the roast. Individually trivial, collectively not, and some of it is the food that lands dogs in hospital with pancreatitis.

What varies, and why the same advice does not fit every dog

Size.

A small dog's daily energy need is a fraction of a large dog's. The same shop-bought biscuit that disappears into a retriever's day can be a meaningful share of a terrier's. Treat size should scale with the dog, and most commercial treats are not sized for small breeds.

Neuter status.

Energy requirement drops after neutering, in both sexes. If the portion is not adjusted in the months afterwards, weight gain is close to inevitable, and this is when a great many dogs quietly become overweight.

Age.

Adult dogs need less than growing ones, and older dogs with less muscle and less activity need less again. The portion that kept a dog lean at three will often not keep it lean at nine.

Breed and conformation.

Retrievers and some spaniels are unusually food-motivated. Brachycephalic breeds pay a much higher price for extra weight, because fat around the neck and chest worsens an airway that is already compromised, and because they cannot cool themselves efficiently. Long-backed breeds such as dachshunds carry more spinal risk with extra load.

Medication and disease.

Steroids, some antiepileptic drugs and some behavioural medications increase appetite. Hypothyroidism slows metabolism. Hyperadrenocorticism causes both appetite increase and a distended abdomen that looks like fat. None of these are treat problems, and none of them are solved by feeding less.

Season and work.

A working or sporting dog's requirement changes hugely between season and off-season. A dog fed at working rations through a quiet winter gains steadily.

Reading the dog rather than the scale

A dog that leaves its meal is often a dog that has already eaten elsewhere.

Weight alone is a poor measure because it does not tell you what the weight is made of. Use your hands weekly.

Ribs.

Run your fingertips flat along the side of the chest without pressing. You should feel the ribs easily, with a thin covering over them, in the way you feel the knuckles on the back of your hand. Having to press to find them means excess fat. Seeing them clearly at rest in a short-coated dog means too little.

Waist from above.

Standing over the dog, there should be a visible narrowing behind the ribs. A straight or bulging outline means excess.

Tuck from the side.

The belly line should rise from the end of the ribcage towards the hind legs. A level or sagging line means excess.

The behaviour tells.

Dogs carrying too much weight lie down sooner on walks, take longer to recover after exercise, struggle in heat, hesitate at stairs and jumps, and groom themselves less at the rear. Owners commonly read all of that as age.

Weight gain that is not about treats

Before you cut anything, rule out the conditions that mimic overfeeding. Each has a tell.

If the dog is genuinely eating the same, moving the same, and gaining, that is a veterinary question first and a diet question second.

The reset that works

Step one: audit for three days, honestly.

Write down everything that enters the dog, from every person, including chews, dental products, pill vehicles, licked plates and training treats. Do not change anything during the audit. Most owners are surprised by the list itself, which is the point.

Step two: weigh the meal in grams.

Cups and scoops vary enormously with how the food settles and how it is packed. A cheap kitchen scale removes the guesswork permanently. Feeding guides on packaging are starting points for an average dog, not prescriptions.

Step three: take the treat allowance out of the ration.

Physically. Put the day's food in a container in the morning, and let every treat, chew and training reward be paid for from that container where the treat is food the dog already eats. For treats that cannot come from the ration, reduce the meal to compensate.

Step four: give one person the container.

The system fails at the point where two people are both feeding from an unlimited supply. One container per day, visible in the kitchen, makes overfeeding obvious to everyone in the house.

Step five: change what a treat means, not just what it weighs.

Much treat-giving is really attention-giving. A dog that gets a scratch behind the ear, a thrown toy, a sniffing detour on the walk or a short game usually accepts the substitution better than the human does.

Step six: reweigh at fixed intervals, not daily.

Weekly or fortnightly on the same scale. Daily weighing produces noise and discouragement. Aim for gradual loss; rapid loss in dogs is neither safe nor sustainable, and in cats it is dangerous, which is why the same crash approach should never be transferred between species.

Treats that are a problem regardless of calories

Grapes, raisins, sultanas and currants.

Capable of causing acute kidney injury, and the amount that does it is unpredictable between individual dogs. That unpredictability is what makes them dangerous. This includes fruit cake, mince pies, scones and cereal bars.

Onion, garlic, leek, chive and shallot.

Damage red blood cells, with a cumulative effect. Cooked and powdered forms count, which means gravy, stock, stuffing and many savoury leftovers.

Chocolate.

Toxicity depends on how dark it is. Cocoa powder and dark chocolate are far more dangerous than milk chocolate for the same weight.

Macadamia nuts.

Cause a distinctive weakness and tremor, usually in the hind limbs.

Cooked bones.

Splinter into sharp fragments. They cause obstruction, perforation and severe constipation. Raw feeding is a separate discussion, but cooked bone is not part of it.

Very fatty leftovers.

Trimmings, skin, drippings and rich sauces can trigger pancreatitis, which is painful, occasionally fatal and disproportionately common after holidays. Miniature schnauzers and some terriers are more prone.

Chews that are harder than teeth.

Antlers, hooves, nylon bones and dried bone can fracture the large upper chewing tooth. That fracture usually needs extraction or root canal treatment. A useful test is whether you would be happy to be hit on the kneecap with it.

Chews that swell or shear.

Rawhide and some compressed chews soften into a slippery mass that can be swallowed whole and lodge in the oesophagus or intestine. Dogs that gulp rather than chew should not have them unsupervised.

What never to do

Do not use human sugar-free products, including sugar-free peanut butter, as a pill vehicle or enrichment filler.

Do not give a dog a chew you cannot supervise, and remove any chew once it becomes small enough to swallow whole.

Do not free-feed a food-motivated dog and try to control treats separately. The bowl has to be measured before anything else works.

Do not crash-diet a dog by halving the food. Rapid restriction produces a hungry, food-obsessed, muscle-losing dog, and it makes counter-surfing and bin raiding worse.

Do not assume a treat is safe because a dog has eaten it before without a problem. Grape toxicity in particular is not dose-predictable, and formulations of human foods change.

Do not treat weight gain in an older dog as inevitable. It is more often a treatable disease or a portion that was never adjusted.

When to get help

A measured meal, finished, with the treat allowance already accounted for.

Contact a vet immediately, before any symptoms appear, if the dog has eaten grapes or dried vine fruit, anything containing xylitol or birch sugar, a significant quantity of chocolate, macadamia nuts, or a large amount of onion family food.

Contact a vet the same day if a chew or bone has been swallowed whole, if the dog is retching without producing anything, drooling heavily, or has a tense and painful abdomen.

Book a routine appointment if weight is climbing without a change in feeding, if the dog is losing weight while eating well, if appetite has become extreme, or if you cannot feel the ribs easily. Bring the seven-day intake list and the food photograph, because the conversation is far more productive with them than without.