Dog Treats for Small Dogs

Pea sized pieces that break cleanly between two fingers suit a small dog best, whatever size the treat was sold in. The bag is cut for the average dog; yours is not the average dog. Size, snap and count decide whether a treat works for a small one.

Piece size by weight of the dog

A treat made for a 70 pound dog is a whole meal's worth of chewing for a 10 pound one. Hold the piece beside your dog's muzzle before you hand it over. If it is wider than the muzzle at its widest point, break it down.

A working rule from the counter, not a standard: for a dog under 10 pounds, a piece about the size of a pea or smaller. From 10 to 25 pounds, the size of a fingernail. Pieces that small can be eaten in one bite and swallowed without a fuss, and that is the whole point of cutting them down.

There is one more reason to go small. Training can mean forty repetitions in a session, and a small dog cannot take forty full sized biscuits. Tiny pieces keep the work going without the pouch emptying or the day's treats stacking up.

Shape counts as much as size. A round piece rolls under the sofa and a small dog goes after it at speed, while a flat chip stays where it lands. Cubes and chips are the easy shapes to break down, and long sticks need cutting before they are a small dog's size.

Breakable treats

The test is simple: break one over a bowl and count what falls. A treat that snaps into three or four clean pieces is useful. A treat that shatters into dust leaves you with a sprinkle and nothing to hand over. A soft treat that tears like clay is also useful, since you can pinch off what you need.

Freeze dried pieces and cheese bites tend to snap rather than crumble. Sniff and Shift freeze dries Minnows whole in small batches in Malvern, imported fish that are already small, and its Cheddar Cheese Bites are freeze dried in small batches too, so they break down further with a squeeze.

Try the pinch test at home: a freeze dried piece held between thumb and finger should split along its grain with very little pressure. Hard baked biscuits sold as small treats are the usual disappointment: they crack into shards, and a shard is not a piece. If a biscuit needs a knife, it is not a small dog treat.

Calories per piece for a ten pound dog

VCA Hospitals advises keeping treats to a small share of the day's calories, and VCA's figure is no more than 10 percent. For a small dog that share is small in absolute terms. The arithmetic is short. The real figure for your dog is the one on the food's printed label, or the one a licensed professional who cares for your dog gives you; everything below is a worked example with made up round numbers.

Suppose a 10 pound dog eats 250 calories a day, going by the printed label of its food, and you hold treats to the 10 percent VCA Hospitals suggests, which leaves 25 calories to spend. USDA FoodData Central lists cheddar cheese at 403 calories per 100 grams, about 4 per gram, so 25 calories comes to about six grams of ordinary cheddar. USDA puts a one inch cube of cheddar at 17 grams, so the whole day's allowance is about a third of one cube.

Freeze dried cheese has the water taken out, so each piece weighs less and each gram carries more. Use the calories per ounce printed on the bag's label for the real count, and weigh ten pieces on a kitchen scale once so you know what one piece is worth.

Chews scaled down

A chew for a small dog should be short enough to be held between the front paws and thin enough that the dog can get its mouth around it. Cut a long chew down to roughly the length of the dog's own muzzle plus a little, and keep the offcut for later.

A thin chew finishes quickly. A dog under 10 pounds can wear through a thin air dried strip in minutes, so match the chew's thickness to how long you want it to last, and offer it only when you can watch.

Watch the dog while it chews, and pick up the last small piece once it is gone, since the end of a chew is the part that can be swallowed whole. The raw feeding notice on this site says the same of any treat: it can break into pieces, so stay with the animal while it eats.

Shop by size in small dog treats, where the pieces and the chews are sorted for dogs your size.

Carrying treats for a small dog

Tiny treats are fiddly in cold fingers, which is the trade off nobody mentions on the bag. A pouch with a wide, soft mouth beats a narrow zip, and a small tin in a coat pocket beats both in winter. Fill it with pieces already broken down, so you are never snapping a treat in mittens. Wear the pouch on the side away from the dog as well, since a small dog will dive at a pouch that hangs at nose height.

Keep the crumbs. The dust at the bottom of a pouch makes a good sprinkle over a meal, and it counts toward the day's total like everything else, a point the guide to how many treats a day works through.

A house with a small dog and a big one needs two sets of pieces, and the article on dog treats for large dogs covers the other end of the scale.

Common questions

What size treat is right for a Chihuahua?

A piece about the size of a pea, or smaller for the tiniest dogs. Hold it next to the muzzle, and break it down if it looks wider than the mouth. Smaller pieces let you reward many times without the day's treats adding up.

Can a small dog eat treats made for big dogs?

It can, if you cut them down to a small dog's size first. The treat itself is not the problem; the piece is. Break or cut it so one piece is a single bite.

How many treats can a 10 pound dog have each day?

It depends on the calories on the food's printed label and the calories in each piece. VCA Hospitals advises keeping treats to a small share of the day's calories. Count pieces rather than handfuls, and weigh a sample of ten once.

What do you carry tiny treats in?

A pouch with a wide, soft mouth, or a small tin in a coat pocket. Fill it with pieces already broken down so you are not snapping treats while holding a leash. In cold weather a tin opens more easily than a zip.