Are Dog Treats Bad for Dogs?
Short answer: no, but the question is the wrong shape. Treats are not a category that is good or bad. They are calories with a job, and whether they help or harm comes down to how many, which ones, and what they displace.
We sell a treat, so read the next bit knowing that.
The only number that really matters
Treats and extras should stay under 10% of a dog's daily calories (UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital). The other 90% comes from a complete, balanced diet.
The arithmetic is unforgiving once you do it. A dog eating 500 calories a day has 50 to spend. That is not very much, and almost nobody counts it.
Here is what 50 calories buys, using UC Davis's own figures: fifty grams of raw baby carrots is 18 kcal. Half a cup of boiled green beans, 22 kcal. A quarter cup of chopped apple, about 15. One teaspoon of honey, 21.
Now compare that to a biscuit nobody weighed.
A worked day, because the abstract version fools everyone
Take a 15 kg Indian pariah, moderately active, eating around 600 calories a day. His treat budget is 60.
Morning: a corner of roti from breakfast. Mid-morning: two training biscuits. Afternoon: somebody's grandmother gives him a piece of paneer because he looked at her. Evening: a dental stick, because the packet said dental. Night: the last bite of whatever was on the plate.
None of those feels like overfeeding. Added up, a day like that commonly runs to two or three times the budget, and the dental stick alone can be a third of it.
Nobody decided to do this. That is rather the point - it is assembled by five people who each gave one small thing, and no single one of them was wrong.
Why the 10% exists at all
Because treats are not formulated to be complete. Feed too many and you are not simply adding calories on top of a good diet, you are diluting one that was balanced for vitamins, minerals and protein in particular ratios, so the proportions the dog actually eats drift away from the ones on the bag. He gets fatter and, oddly, less well fed at the same time.
The thing treats actually do damage
Weight. Not teeth. Not behaviour. Weight.
Across countries, studies put the share of dogs who are overweight or obese somewhere between 15% and 65% (The Pharma Innovation Journal, 2022). The Indian data in that review is thinner than it should be: one survey of 500 dogs in Ludhiana, Punjab, found 14%.
Treat that 14% carefully. It is a single city, a single study, and owner-reported obesity is consistently under-recognised everywhere it has been measured. The honest reading is that nobody has properly counted Indian dogs yet.
What is not in doubt is the mechanism. Obesity in dogs is overwhelmingly a human behaviour problem rather than a canine one, and the hand holding the biscuit is the variable.
The treats that are genuinely dangerous
A short list, and this part is not about moderation.
Chocolate, macadamia nuts, garlic, onions, grapes and raisins are all on UC Davis's avoid list. Grapes are the strange one - the toxic dose is unpredictable and small amounts have caused kidney failure.
Then there is xylitol, which deserves its own paragraph. It is a sweetener, it appears in sugar-free gum, some peanut butters, and a growing list of human foods, and it is sometimes labelled birch sugar or wood sugar instead. In dogs it triggers a sharp insulin release, and roughly 0.1 g per kilogram of bodyweight is enough to cause dangerous hypoglycaemia (VCA Hospitals). Onset can be ten to sixty minutes. Higher doses cause liver failure.
Check peanut butter labels before you share. Most Indian brands do not use it. Some imported ones do.
Where our own chew sits in that 10%
It counts. Obviously it counts, and a company selling a daily chew has every incentive not to mention that.
ChewCheer is 60 chews in a 120 g pack, so a chew is about two grams. The pack says two a day for dogs up to 10 kg, three up to 20 kg, four above that. Those are small amounts of food, but they are not zero, and they come out of the same 50-calorie budget as everything else.
If your dog already gets biscuits, training treats, a bit of roti and the occasional paneer, adding anything daily means subtracting something. We would rather you subtracted the biscuit.
How to actually stay inside the limit
Four habits, none of them difficult.
Weigh the meals rather than scooping them, because scoops drift upward over months without anyone deciding to make them bigger.
Break treats smaller. A dog is counting events, not grams; half a biscuit lands almost exactly like a whole one, and a quarter is not far behind.
Keep a list for a week of everything the dog eats, including what other people in the house give him. The list is usually longer than anybody expects and it is where the real problem shows up.
Use vegetables for the volume. Carrot and green bean do the job for a fraction of the calories, and most dogs take them happily.
The honest summary
Treats are not bad for dogs. Unmeasured treats are, and the damage arrives slowly enough that nobody notices the year it happened.
Stay under the tenth, avoid the genuinely toxic list, and count everything - our chew included.
Frequently asked questions
Are dog treats bad for dogs?
Not in themselves. The guidance is that treats and extras stay under 10% of daily calories, with the rest from a complete balanced diet. Problems come from quantity rather than the existence of treats: over-feeding both adds calories and dilutes a diet that was balanced in specific ratios. A few genuinely toxic foods are a separate matter entirely.
How many treats can my dog have a day?
Work it from calories, not count. If your dog eats 500 calories a day, about 50 are available for treats and extras. That is less than it sounds - fifty grams of raw baby carrot is 18 kcal and a teaspoon of honey is 21. The number of biscuits that fits depends entirely on the biscuit, which is why weighing meals and reading labels beats guessing.
Which treats are actually dangerous for dogs?
Chocolate, macadamia nuts, garlic, onions, grapes and raisins should be avoided outright. Grapes are particularly unpredictable, with small amounts having caused kidney failure. Xylitol is the one most people miss: it appears in sugar-free gum and some peanut butters, sometimes labelled birch sugar, and about 0.1 g per kg of bodyweight can cause dangerous hypoglycaemia within 10 to 60 minutes.
Do daily supplements count towards the 10% treat limit?
Yes. Anything that is not the complete balanced diet counts, including a daily chew like ours. If your dog already gets biscuits, training treats and table scraps, adding something daily means something else has to come out. The budget does not expand because the new item is marketed as healthy.
How common is obesity in dogs in India?
Not well established. Studies across countries put overweight or obese dogs between 15% and 65%, and the Indian data is thin - one survey of 500 dogs in Ludhiana, Punjab, reported 14%. That is a single city and owner-reported obesity is consistently under-recognised, so the honest answer is that nobody has properly counted Indian dogs yet.
Is it better to give vegetables instead of commercial treats?
For volume, often yes. Fruits and vegetables tend to be low in protein, fat, sodium and phosphorus, which makes them useful when a dog wants something frequently. Carrot and green bean deliver roughly 18 to 22 kcal per serving. They do not replace a treat chosen for a specific purpose, but they are a cheap way to stay inside the calorie budget.