Benny Bully's

[The Food Group]

As we prepare to bring our pup home soon, I've been reading through as many discussions as possible.

When deciding on high reward treats for the purpose of training, I know Pure Bites come highly recommended.  Just wondering if anyone has heard of Benny Bully's as they are sourced in Canada and USA.

We realize that the pup should not be introduced to any new food and/or treat until home, settled, vet checked and cleared of parasites so as to make the process of elimination in the event of upset stomach or diarrhea easier. 

Here is their website:

http://www.bennybullys.com/eng/index.php

Appreciate any insight.

Thanks!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

The sourcing looks okay, but the nutritional info on the website is difficult to decipher; it's given per 100 grams rather than per treat or per serving, so it's pretty hard to know the fat and calorie content of each treat. 
When looking for training treats, you want something really, really tiny, because you give a lot of them. Things like Cloudstar's Tricky Trainers or Wet Noses' Little Stars work well; plain freeze dried liver treats are also great for high value training treats, too. I like Pure Bites because they are 100% chicken, liver, or whatever the "flavor" is, and there are really tiny pieces in the bags. 

For the first two weeks, plain chicken Pure Bites or pieces of plain boiled white meat chicken are all you should use, assuming that the pup's food is chicken based, which it usually is. :)

[Stella]

I have a 70lb adult dog and I still break the tricky trainers in half!!!!

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Yes, Pure Bites do have crumbs. We cut ours into even tinier pieces, so we have lots of crumbs.  We keep the pieces in a little plastic dog treat container that fastens to your belt loop with a carabiner, or hangs from your neck on a lanyard.  We picked it up at a dog show.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

LOL, I love that you knew that! 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Down the road, when you are able to introduce new foods, freeze-dried lamb lung makes a really great high-value "for the crate only" type treat. Some people call it "doggy crack", lol. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Oh no, you don't have to cook anything, lol! I couldn;t do that either! 

They're fairly common packaged dog treats. :)

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I do disagree, but Acana is fine. The question is, which formula are you going to use? The Acana U.S. line doesn't include a puppy formula. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Unfortunately, the TLC website doesn't give the ingredients or the nutritional analysis of the food, so there's no way to compare it with the Acana formulas. You would ideally want to choose the formula most similar to the TLC formula in terms of ingredients and nutritional analysis. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I saw this, but I still can't find the actual ingredient list or the nutritional analysis. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

The lack of transparency is one of the things I dislike most about these pet foods that are sold through multilevel marketing schemes. It's much the same with our U.S. counterpart, Life's Abundance. Make sure that you aren't signed up for "autoship" on the TLC food, I hear it's very difficult to cancel those. 

I would try not transition longer than 4-5 days. Check the feeding amounts on both foods, if there is a big difference in calories, you can't just replace a portion of one with an equal portion of the other, or you may end up overfeeding.

 Please do keep us posted.  

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

In order to make the best decision about which food to transition to, we really need the nutritional info on the TLC formula the breeder is using. Especially the protein and fat percentages, and the actual list of ingredients. 

It would also be a good idea to compare the nutritional analysis between Orijen Puppy and whatever Acana formula you are considering; once you do that, you may see that there is not much difference. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I was thinking you might just ask the breeder to give you the info off the bag, if she has one. Maybe she could take pictures of the label and send them to you.