Author: Phoebe Cooper
Pet owners love to spoil their dogs, and a great way to show them your love is by providing them with treats that will get their tails wagging and keep them entertained for hours.
Finding the right treats and chews for your pup can be a challenge, however, and every dog possesses a unique chew personality that results in different needs and preferences.
While a dog’s chew personality is composed of several factors, such as their health needs, dietary restrictions, and size, a dog’s chew capacity, or chew strength, plays a significant role in determining which treats are best suited to them.
Continue reading for a guide to determine your dog’s individual chew strength and the treat options that will work best for them.
Why Is Understanding Your Dog’s Chew Strength Important?
Learning to understand a dog’s chew strength is incredibly useful in guiding dog owners to chew options they’re confident their dog will love from the moment they take them off the shelf, saving you valuable time and money. (Sign you up, right?!)
So what are the various chew strength categories that your dog might fall into?
Chew Strengths Are Generally Broken Down Into Three Categories:
1. Light/gentle
- Does your dog take a long time to finish their treats, and are they gentle with their toys?
- Do they have sensitive teeth or other dental issues?
- Is your dog a senior or a puppy?
We generally recommend light chews for dogs that meet these criteria.
2. Medium/moderate
- Dogs your dog love to chew, but their chews still last them a reasonable amount of time?
- Do their toys last and either never get destroyed or take a while before they do?
This is a good indication that they’re a medium-capacity chewer.
3. Hard/aggressive
- Does your dog love to chew and consume their treats, toys, and chews almost instantaneously? (You know the ones… you can say sayonara to that 20+ dollars you spent on them in no time!)
This means that your dog is likely a hard or aggressive chewer.
However, chew strength isn’t always one-size-fits-all, and some dogs may fall somewhere in between these categories.
Still Confused? Try the Bully Stick Test!
If you’re still struggling to determine which chew strength your dog possesses, give your dog a Natural Farm standard sized Bully Stick and observe how long it takes them to chew through it:
- Light chewers can take several hours or days to get through a standard Bully Stick.
- Medium chewers may take an hour to a few hours to get through a standard Bully Stick.
- Hard chewers might go through a standard Bully Stick in minutes to an hour.
What Types of Chews Are Suggested for the Various Chew Strength Categories?
While there are lots of different chew options that will be great for each category, I’ll present you with a few of our favorite recommendations from the Natural Farm line:
Light Chewers
Medium Chewers
Hard Chewers
Spoiling Your Dog Goes Beyond Finding Tasty Treats
While many dogs will chow down any flavorful treat, there are certain considerations that pet owners should take when choosing their dog’s chews, treats, and bones, beyond how delicious your pup finds them and how long they last.
It’s important to choose treats that are safe and healthy for your dog, and it’s an added bonus when they’re rich in nutrients to provide your pup with some extra health benefits.
Luckily, Natural Farm has a vast assortment of all-natural chew options that will satisfy most dogs’ unique needs and preferences, and they’re loaded with beneficial nutrients such as protein, glucosamine, and/or chondroitin.
These sorts of nutrients, depending on the type, will work to support well-rounded muscle, skin, coat, and joint health. Not only that, but Natural Farm’s products naturally promote better dental health as dogs chew on them, and they’re sustainably sourced from ethically raised proteins. Read more about Natural Farm at the end of the blog and choose the very best for your pet by selecting Natural Farm today!
About Natural Farm
In 2018, after years of searching for high-quality, natural dog treat products, we decided to bring them to the market ourselves. That’s how Natural Farm was born—we wanted to present the industry with what it lacked the most: natural dog chews, treats, and bones, sustainably sourced from local suppliers and produced in our own human-grade, FDA- and USDA-approved facilities, where every product is lab tested for quality and contamination.
Natural Farm is committed to pets, people, and the planet. We give back to communities and pets in need, support reforestation efforts and nonprofits, and our products are packaged using only recycled materials.
