We are helping to celebrate the two year anniversary of TT this week! Kol and Sugar, the cohosts, have created an “Iron Chef” type of contest and asked for participants to share recipes or product reviews using a secret ingredient. In this case, the secret ingredient is…..Fruit!
Ironically, we wrote about the use of fruits (and veggies) in dog food two weeks ago. If you want a refresher, you can read that piece here. Today, we will review a new treat from Cloud Star that we recently learned about. We were provided a small amount of samples from Cloud Star so that we could see how our dog’s reacted to their taste.
We have used the Cloud Star Tricky Trainer Crunchy treats in the past and found them to be high-value treats that were well suited for training purposes. The new product line from Cloud Star is called “Dynamo Dog” functional treats and there are 3 types: 1) Hip & Joint, 2) Skin & Coat, and 3) Tummy. As you can tell from the names, this line of treats are made with specific health benefits in mind and can be used as an alternative to or to augment pill supplements.
Each of the three types includes some form of fruit in the recipe. We will use the Skin & Coat recipe for today’s review.
Jack investigates the Cloud Star delivery.
There is a lot to like about this product’s ingredient list, which is shown below.
Salmon, chickpea flour, potato flour, tapioca starch, maple syrup, vegetable glycerine, carrots, apples, spinach, cherries, sweet potatoes, cranberries, natural flavor, salt, flaxseed, avocados, eggs, salmon oil, phosphoric acid, sorbic acid (as preservative), vitamin E supplement, citric acid, mixed tocopherols (as preservative), rosemary.
As you can see, this recipe includes both natural sweeteners (maple syrup) as well as several types of fruits- apples, cherries, and cranberries, which are used to provide flavor, sweetness, and of course, vitamins and anti-oxidants that can help with the dog’s skin and coat.
- Apples are a great source of fiber and provide Vitamin C
- Cherries are a great source of Vitamin A and C and are rich in anti-oxidants that can help reduce inflammation
- Cranberries area great source of Vitamins A, assorted B’s and C and also are rich in anti-oxidants.
The salmon and flax are rich in Omega fatty acids which are key to a healthy coat and skin, and provide anti-inflammatory benefits as well.
These treats use tapioca starch and vegetable glycerine as binders and to make these treats soft and chewy. We are not necessarily fans of tapioca starch which is often used as a replacement to grains in ‘grain free’ recipes, but at this point, we have no specific concerns about this ingredient. Vegetable glycerine is far superior to ‘glycerine’ which is often synthetically made.
The one concern/question I have is why include “natural flavor” in this recipe? What is that actually? It seems to me that there are enough flavors and sufficient sweetening to make these treats enjoyable to most dogs. I will leave it to the Cloud Star team to address this in the comments.
According to the representative at Cloud Star, these treats contain 11 kcals per treat. We decided to cut them into smaller pieces so that we are able to lower the per-treat impact on our Jack and Maggie’s daily calorie intake. And speaking of Jack and Maggie, they absolutely love these treats. It is nice to know that they are able to enjoy a treat that is rich in anti-oxidants (from the fruits!) and that can also help their skin and coat stay healthy.
Announcement- Cloud Star has offered to provide free sampler ‘care packages’ to random readers as part of our FitDog Friday blog hop. We will provide more details in this Friday’s post. Thanks Cloud Star!
We’re joining the Tasty Tuesday Blog Hop sponsored by Sugar, the Golden Retriever and Kolchak from Kol’s Notes:
