The 10% rule: treating your dog without overdoing it

A rough rule for a healthy adult dog at a normal activity level: 30 calories per pound of body weight, daily. A 25-pound dog needs around 750 calories. A 50-pound dog, around 1,500. A 10-pound dog, around 300. These are ballparks — puppies, working dogs, and pregnant dogs need more; senior or overweight dogs need less.

Run the 10% math on those numbers. A 25-pound dog has a 75-calorie treat budget. A 50-pound dog has 150. A 10-pound dog has 30 — which is one small biscuit, total, for the entire day. That last one usually surprises people.

Three numbers matter. First, calories per treat — usually listed as "kcal per piece" on the back. If a brand only lists kcal per kilogram, weigh one treat and do the conversion; if a brand doesn't list calories at all, put the bag back.

Second, the ingredient list. The same rules as dog food apply: a real protein source in the first slot, no anonymous "meat" or "animal digest," no artificial colors. Third, the AAFCO statement. Treats are explicitly labeled as "for intermittent or supplemental feeding" — that's the polite legal way of saying don't replace meals with these.

If you're working on training, you want small, low-calorie treats — under 5 calories each — that you can hand out 20 or 30 times in a session without blowing the daily budget. Soft, smelly, broken into pea-sized pieces is the format trainers reach for.

Long-lasting chews (rawhide-style sticks, dental chews, jerky strips) are the opposite. They're meant to be a once-a-day event — high calories per piece, but they give a dog 10 or 20 minutes of chewing satisfaction in exchange. The mistake is using both freely. Pick a category for the day.

For everyday biscuits, Milk-Bone Crunchy Medium is the long-time staple — predictable calorie count (about 40 per biscuit), real beef flavor, and they don't crumble. Milk-Bone Mini Flavor Snacks are the smaller-dog version at roughly 5 calories each, which makes them usable as training rewards.

For higher-protein options, Pur Luv Chicken Jerky is real chicken breast strips — around 25 calories per strip, no fillers. DreamBone Twist Sticks are the rawhide-free chew most often requested by customers whose dogs gulp rawhides — vegetable-based, ~35 calories each, designed to last longer in the mouth.

For dogs that need to lose a few pounds, Rocco & Roxie Soft & Chewy Jerky tears easily into half-sized pieces, which lets you cut the calorie load in half without cutting the reward.

You can no longer feel your dog's ribs under a thin layer of skin without pressing. Your vet flags weight at an annual visit. The waist tuck disappears when you look at the dog from above. Energy drops without an obvious cause. Any one of those is reason to log every treat for a week and run the 10% math honestly — including the bites of human food, the kibble used as training rewards, and the "just one more" before bed.

Cutting back doesn't mean cutting out. Smaller pieces, lower-calorie picks, and swapping some of the treat budget for non-food rewards (a walk, a tug session, a thirty-second game of fetch) all count. The dog mostly cares about the ritual, not the calorie density.