JR Pet Braided Goat Skin - 100g

JR Pet Braided Goat Skin - 100g is braided dried goat skin, a genuinely novel protein chew.

Key Features

• Goat is a protein almost no dog has eaten: Which is exactly what makes it valuable. On an exclusion diet you need a meat the dog has never been exposed to, and goat is far enough off the usual list to qualify for nearly every dog.
• Braided skin, so it is a long chew: Skin dried and braided is tough and fibrous. The dog has to unpick the braid, which makes 100 g last.
• Low in fat: Lean for a skin chew, so it can be a regular rather than a treat for high days.
• Air-dried in Europe, one ingredient: Goat skin and nothing else: no grain, no gluten, no additives or preservatives.

Chewing Safely

• Supervise every chew. A natural chew is not a toy you can leave a dog alone with, and the risk with all of them is the same one: a piece small enough to swallow whole.
• Take the end away once it gets down to a size the dog could gulp. That single habit prevents almost every chew related emergency there is.
• Match the chew to the dog. One a large dog finishes in two minutes has become a choking hazard, and one a small dog cannot mark at all just frustrates it.
• Fresh water alongside. Air-dried chews are dry by definition, and a dog that has worked at one will want a drink afterwards.
• Introduce a new chew gradually, a short session to begin with. A dog that has never had a hard chew will overdo it and end up with a sore mouth or a loose stool.
• Very hard chews can chip or fracture a tooth, particularly in an older dog or a determined chewer. If your dog attacks a chew rather than working at it, pick something softer.

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

• If a vet has asked you to run a strict exclusion diet, this is one of the few chews in any range that fits it.
• Braid thickness varies, which changes how long one lasts.
• Skin chews are rich. Introduce one slowly rather than giving a whole braid on the first day.
• Keep chews away from children, and wash your hands after handling them and after the dog has been chewing.