Very few dogs get heavy on their meals. Weight arrives in small pieces: a biscuit at the door, a chew in the evening, the crust nobody wanted, three rewards for a good sit. Each one feels like nothing. Together they can easily be a quarter of the day's calories.
What the 10% rule actually says
Vets use a simple split: at least 90% of the day's calories from a complete food, at most 10% from everything else. Note that it's calories, not pieces. And 'everything else' means training rewards, dental sticks and whatever falls off the table too.
Do the maths once
Look at the kcal figure on the bag, multiply by what you actually feed, then take a tenth. A 10 kg dog eating around 600 kcal a day has a treat budget of roughly 60 kcal — one small cube of cheese, or one cocktail sausage, and that's it. Written on a note by the food bin, that number changes habits surprisingly fast.
Swaps that cost almost nothing
- Carrot sticks, green beans, cucumber slices — a few calories each, and most dogs crunch them happily.
- Count training rewards out of the morning portion. The same kibble works, and the day's total doesn't move.
- Break treats smaller. Dogs count moments, not grams: half a biscuit earns the same tail wag.
- For the long chewers, a frozen carrot or a stuffed toy instead of a high-calorie chew.
What shouldn't reach the bowl
Grapes and raisins, chocolate, onion and garlic, and anything sweetened with xylitol (birch sugar) — including sugar-free peanut butter — are genuinely dangerous, not merely fattening. Cooked bones splinter. And very fatty scraps can trigger pancreatitis, turning a nice evening into an emergency visit.
One last thing: if the waistline is disappearing, cut the treats before you cut the meals. The meals are where balanced nutrition lives; the treats are where the spare calories hide. Weigh your dog once a month and let the trend decide, not the guilt.
