Healthy Snacks & Treats For Sensitive Dogs

Switching to a homemade, fresh food diet doesn’t mean your sensitive dog has to miss out on treats and snacks.

Treats are an important part of your dog’s routine, and they are invaluable for training and forming good habits.

But they’re often choc-full of the types of ingredients that contribute to inflammation, so we strongly recommend removing any processed treats and moving to single ingredient or homemade options.  

We have created a range of nutritious freeze-dried treats that are the perfect accompaniment to this meal plan.

We’ve chosen turkey thigh as it’s a nutritious, high protein choice that’s not as common in treat form. We freeze dry it to lock in all of the nutrients of raw food, with the benefit of being shelf stable.

If your dog can tolerate turkey (which most can), it’s an excellent choice. 

Other nutritious options to swap for processed treats include poached chicken breast pieces, dehydrated meats, banana chips, carob or yogurt drops, berries, apple pieces, or a few raw nuts (never feed macadamias).

Keeping a variety of these types of foods in a jar in the fridge will keep things interesting for your dog. 

Enrichment is another great way to keep your dog engaged and make them “work” for their food. You can use a puzzle feeder or Kong stuffed with their main meal or as a treat layered with delicious things like natural yogurt, meat, banana, peanut butter, tahini (crushed sesame paste), mashed sweet potato or some tinned oysters or mussels. These can be frozen to make them last longer and give your dog an even better mental workout. 

Recreational bones are another great way to keep your dog entertained, while also cleaning their teeth. Most butchers will have bones that have been stripped of most meat and can be gnawed on for hours in the garden.

If you like the idea of making treats yourself, this is a great way to guarantee there is no cross contamination or surprise ingredients present. Keeping it simple is a good way to monitor what your dog tolerates well and what doesn’t agree with them. 

• Lean meats like kangaroo, duck breast or pork loin are nutritious, low allergy options. Simply cut into pieces and dry in a dehydrator, very low temperature oven or air fryer with a dehydration setting (break one open to check it is dried all the way through) 
• If your dog can tolerate more common proteins (like chicken or beef), you can dehydrate any lean meat in the same way. Heart is a good choice, as is small amount of liver, kidney or lung if you can source it. These can be sliced into treat sized pieces and dried in the same way.
• If your dog does well with seafood, you can dry oysters, mussels, calamari, prawns or pieces of fish in the same way. 
• Berries make good dehydrated, low allergy snacks and can be combined with yogurt to make homemade yogurt drops for a gut health and antioxidant boost. Spread onto a dehydrator sheet or baking paper and then cut into pieces once dry.
• Dog safe smoothies are a good way to add antioxidants, pre and probiotics, digestive enzymes and hydration in one package. Fruits like pineapple, papaya, banana and berries are excellent choices, as are leafy greens, blitzed with kefir or coconut water. You can give your dog a few tablespoons of smoothie fresh or freeze them in ice cube trays or icy pole mould for a frozen treat.