FEEDING GUIDELINES:

These treats are not intended to replace a complete and balanced diet. They are considered part of a complete and balanced diet. If you are interested in transitioning your dog over to a raw-food diet, or incorporating some raw into your dog's normal complete and balanced diet, I offer puppy coaching to help walk you through the process safely.

If you feed a regular processed diet to your dog, it is recommended and considered safe to feed up to half of your dog's caloric intake in raw meat. Introduce a few treats at a time, separate from their regular meal. Use as the only treat in your training session. Slowly work up to rewarding throughout the day, whenever your dog is behaving how you like.

If desired, re-hydrate the treats in water in the refrigerator overnight and cook before feeding. Always provide lots of fresh purified water for your dog to drink. We use freeze-dried raw meat in training sessions as a trade-out for calories that would be given in regular mealtimes. These are the healthiest, freshest, highest value training treats we have ever used.

Handling guidelines: As with all dog treats or food, wash hands after use. For best nutrient retention, store in a cool, dark place in an air-tight container, and use within one month of opening. If these treats get wet, use within two days or store in the freezer.

HOW MUCH SHOULD I FEED MY DOG?

Here's how to incorporate Perfect Pup Premium Training Treats into a complete and balanced diet.

The nutrition equivalent of up to one meal of our treats each day can be healthily and happily consumed by your perfect pup. This can be done during training sessions or other enrichment activities.

Conversion factors:

Beef, pork, lamb, and organ meat treats: we have found that 1 oz of training treats is approximately the equivalent to 3 oz of meat.

Chicken and turkey, and some light colored pork loin: 1 oz is approximately the equivalent to 4 oz of meat.

From our research (and percentages are varied), what works for us is approximately 2-3 % of a dog's body weight in raw meat, meaty bones, organ meat, and other raw vegetables in a day. If your dog is extremely active one day, it might need more (just like us when we work up a ravenous appetite after a 16 mile hike.)

To feed a 55 lb., active, and very fit dog, sometimes I feed as much as 3 lbs of raw food per day. That same dog preferred about 1.5 lbs on a regular day. Half of that volume would be our freeze-dried training treats. For my active, but 5 lbs. too chubby Amira, I feed much less. The way I calculate her daily allotment of food is based on her ideal body weight of 75 lbs. I shoot for 2% of her body weight in raw per day. This means 1.5 lbs a day.

Because these treats are freeze-dried, they have no moisture weight and the current weight is not an accurate representation of the caloric value. The volume is a better indicator of how much nutrition these treats are providing for your dogs.

Special considerations for puppies and kibble-fed dogs

As with introducing any new food, if your dog gets loose stool after introducing our premium training treats, you have fed them too much at once. If you have a puppy, you will need to add additional sources of calcium and phosphorus, either in the form of bone meal or a raw meaty bone, to balance out the fresh meat treats.