Tag Archives: treats

12/4/13

Nature’s Gift Natural Chews

I have always happily reviewed products on this blog, and as a long-time fan of Nature’s Gift, I was more than willing to review their new ‘Chews’ range when given the opportunity.

Nature's Gift Natural Chews

In our current climate, avoiding treats manufactured abroad is important – and so it’s reassuring to know that all Nature’s Gift products are produced in Victoria, from Australian products, and from human-grade meat products. Also, they don’t use palm oil in any of their products. So not only am I satisfied that this product is safe for my dogs, but that it is also relatively enviornmentally friendly, too.

Nature’s Gift generously sent us two packets of their new ‘Chews’ range: one of ‘Vitality Chews‘ and one of ‘Digestive Chews‘. (There is also a ‘Joint Chews‘ variety, but presumably they are more targeted at older dogs and they sent me products most relevant to my 6-years-and-younger household.)

Each packet contains 20 chews. Each chew is hard, crumbly, and love-heart shaped biscuit. They are easily broken in hard, but produce lots of crumbs! They are too large to use as training treats, and their crumbly nature doesn’t make them ideal for training treats anyway. They are pretty good at keeping a dog occupied mopping up all those crumbs though.

Nature's Gift Digestive Chews

Nature’s Gift Digestive Chews

The novel thing about these treats is that they’re formulated to maximise the wellbeing of our pets. For example:

  • Vitality Chews target skin, coat and eyes, enriched with Omega 3
  • Digestive Chews target ‘inner function’, enriched with prebiotics
  • Joint Chews target joint health and function, with glucosamine (500mg per chew)

It’s an easy and (according to my dogs) tasty way to get some extra nutrients into your dogs, especially if you feel your dog needs a ‘leg up’ in some way. And, if you have trouble providing your dogs with these nutrients in conventional ways (e.g. have a hard time giving your dogs tablets or capsules) then this might be a handy solution.

Now, my dogs are not the best reviewers when it comes to the taste-testing – as in, they eat anything, and this was no exception. However, I was running a ‘full house’ at the time, and both foster dogs (Bandit and a beagle) and a litter of young puppies all happily sampled this product. (Despite the product not being ‘intended’ for puppies under 4 months. Oops.)

For those interested in ingredients, the Digestive Chews contain:

Rye Flour, Copra Flour, Fresh Australian Chicken Meat, Sucrose, Emulsifiers & Binders, DHA Omega 3, Prebiotics, Inulin Powder, Beet Pulp, Vitamins & Minerals, Natural Antioxidant & Flavour.

And the Vitality Chews have the following ingredients:

Rye Flour, Fish Meal, Flax Seed Flour, Soya Flour, Emulsifiers & Binders, Fresh Australian Chicken Meat, DHA Omega 3, Vitamins & Minerals, Natural Antioxidant & Flavour.

You will notice that neither of these chews contain red meat, which may be important for dogs with sensitivity.

The recommendations are for up to 4 chews a day, depending on the size of the dog. That means if you have a large dog, you might be looking at going through one packet every 5 days. If you have a little dog, under 5kgs, though, the recommendation is one chew a day. Because of the fortified nature of these chews, I would be inclined to stick to these recommendations.

 

These treats were certainly palatable, and I would  recommend that others ‘give them a go’ in situations where they think their dogs are lacking particular nutrients. While my dogs are fit and well, and weren’t given these on a regular basis, I cannot vouch for their effectiveness in helping the conditions that they claim too – but I certainly don’t think that they’d hurt!

I am likely to purchase the ‘Vitality Chews’ in the future following dogs being on a course of antibiotics.

 

Nature’s Gift Natural Chews are available in Woolworths and other supermarkets.

 

Nature's Gift Vitality Chews

Nature’s Gift Vitality Chews

 

Disclaimer: This product was provided free of charge, though this review contains my own thoughts.

01/5/11

Mini-Jackpotting

I’ve always been somewhat sceptical on the concept of jackpotting.  I don’t know why it has never sat well with me – it just seems a bit much to comprehend that dogs can have an understanding of a degree of success.

That being said, my experience does indicate some benefits in jackpotting.  I guess the best description of what I do is ‘mini-jackpotting’.This is what I use when free shaping behaviours, and I reward ‘more successful’ attempts with more food.

Over the last couple of days, I have been training scent identification and indication.  The process was very slow, until I started mini-jackpotting. In this example, my scent was a teabag and I wanted my dog to scratch/dig at the teabag.

Over the session, I was rewarded different interactions in different ways.  My dog would be rewarded with one piece of kibble if the looked at or moved towards the teabag.  I rewarded touching the object with a paw with numerous bits (about 5 pieces). An actual scratch or dig with about 10 pieces.

My dog was very slow at first, but mini-jackpotting seemed to very much speed up the learning process.  There are several reasons that this may be the case…

  1. I read once that dogs understand the time of a reward more than the quantity of the reward… i.e. Dogs find it more rewarding to be given 5 treats in a row, one after the other, rather than being given a handful of 5 treats.  So, dogs find a long reward more rewarding. (Unfortunately I don’t recall the source of this suggestion.)  As it takes more time to eat numerous treats, perhaps the dog understands this as more rewarding.
  2. Another approach on the time front is that when the dog is eating numerous treats, they are actually having time to think. Perhaps when I reward many-treats at once, the dog has more of an opportunity to think through and the improvements I see towards my target behaviour are actually from this thinking time, rather than the reward itself.
  3. The dog might actually understand that if they do x they get more treats than if they do y!

This is the most thought I’ve ever given to ‘mini jackpotting’, and I haven’t been very logical in its implementation.  If this system occurred by accident or subconscious desire to jackpot, I am unsure.  However, I have found it to be quite successful and I would be interested to see if anyone has had similar success.

Further reading: Schedules of Reinforcement