Review: Fruitables
Fruitables were developed by a clinician/nutritionist at the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine, and I was given a couple of samples by a friend. I’m happy to report that the kids loved them to a tail-wagging extreme.
When looking at training treats, there’s three things I look at. The first is ingredients and caloric content. (Pupperoni? Bad. Our usual 100% dried chicken chips / cheap lunch meat? Good.) The second is smell. The smell of the treat has to be SUPER DUPER so that the kids will want them even when they can’t see them. Remember, I’m training a couple of dogs that are mixed hounds at best and exclusively sighthound at worst. The final thing is portability. This is where the wonderful cheap lunch meat, which is usually well-regarded, fails — it’s hard to separate the pieces, it’s hard to control how much I have with me in my training pouch, and if left out or on a long training “exercise” (aka a day at the office for public desensitization / socialization) … well, it’s better if you have a refrigerator, ifyaknowwhatImean.
If you can’t find them at your local pet store yet, you can order them from Amazon.com. There’s several varieties available:
- Pumpkin & Blueberry
- Pumpkin & Banana
- Pumpkin & Apple
- Pumpkin & Graham
- Canned Dry Food Supplement - For mixing with / supplementing your dog’s dry food.
My only wish, which has been communicated back to to Dr. Bauer, is for smaller bits. The 9 calorie cookies are great, but it was too easy to go through them quickly. I ended up (approximately) quartering the cookies for our training session. He responded to my email by saying that they had heard that (and also had found in the process that birds greatly enjoy the treats) and were planning to produce something along those lines in the future.