JR Pet Pure Training Treats - 85g are bite-sized air-dried meat treats for training, in a single protein.

Key Features

• Fresh meat and nothing else: JR build the Pure range on prime cuts rather than offal, air-dried so the water goes and the protein stays. One ingredient on the label, and that ingredient is the animal named on the front.
• No grain, gluten, additives or preservatives: There is nothing in them to react to beyond the meat itself, which is the point of a single protein treat and the reason they suit dogs on an exclusion diet.
• A wide choice of proteins: Beef, chicken, duck, goat, kangaroo, lamb, ostrich, rabbit, salmon, sea bass, turkey and venison across the range, which is an unusually long list and includes most of the genuinely novel ones.
• Works with any diet: Kibble fed, raw fed or anything between. A plain dried meat treat does not complicate a diet the way a compound biscuit does.
• Already the right size: Small pieces straight from the pouch, so you are not standing in the park tearing a stick into bits with cold hands. An 85 g pouch holds a lot of repetitions.

How Much Is Too Much

• Treats want to sit at around a tenth of a dog's daily calories. Everything above that either comes out of the main meal or goes on as weight.
• Air-dried meat is dense, because the water has been taken out of it. A 100 g bag is closer to three or four hundred grams of fresh meat in what it actually delivers, so it goes much further than the weight suggests.
• For training, break them small. A dog works just as hard for a fingernail sized piece as for a whole stick, and you get ten times the repetitions out of the bag.
• On a day with a big chew in it, cut the dinner. That is far easier than trying to take the weight off afterwards.

Single Proteins And Exclusion Diets

• These are single named proteins with nothing else in them, and that is what makes the range useful for more than treating.
• If you are running an exclusion diet to find a food sensitivity, a single protein treat is the only kind you can give without undoing the whole exercise. A treat labelled 'meat and animal derivatives' tells you nothing about what the dog ate.
• The novel proteins are the ones a dog has probably never been exposed to: ostrich, kangaroo, goat, rabbit, venison, sea bass. A dog reacting to chicken and beef has usually never met any of those, which is why a vet will point you at them.
• Introduce one new protein at a time and leave a couple of weeks between them, or you will not know which one caused what.

Storing Them

• Air-dried rather than cooked, so they keep by being dry. Keep them dry and they last; let them get damp and they will go mouldy.
• Reseal the bag or tip them into an airtight tub, and keep them off a sunny shelf and away from the hob.
• That matters more in this climate than it does where they are made. A bag left open in a humid kitchen softens within days.
• Natural products vary. Piece size, colour and thickness differ from bag to bag, because these were parts of animals rather than something extruded to a spec.

Good To Know

• JR list the Pure range as suitable from four weeks. In practice a puppy of four weeks is only beginning to wean, so wait until yours is eating solid food properly, and supervise.
• Resealable pouch. Push the air out before you close it.
• If your dog has a known sensitivity, choose a protein it has never had, and check that nothing else in the bowl contains it.
• Keep treats away from children and wash your hands after handling dried meat.