In order to provide variety for my dog, I constantly change the treats I let her have in between meals. Her main meals always stay the same but her treats vary and this week I picked up the Bakers Meaty Twists from Sainsbury’s. They are not the cheapest treat at £1.45 for 2, by a long shot but she will only have one every other day in between her Bonio’s so it shouldn’t add too much to the pet food bill.

Opening the shiny, plastic bag type housing the chews was easy. You simply tear one corner down, like a packet of Maltersers and out slips one of the chews. Thankfully there are only 2 in the packet; otherwise this style of packaging would maybe present a problem in storage and keeping the chews enclosed.

The Meaty Twists are well named actually, as they are shaped like a bar of steel that has been held at each end and twisted in different directions. The outer part is meant to represent the bone and is quite hard to the touch, although you can pierce it with a fingernail if you push hard, so it is not brittle like normal bone, rather hard in a soft kind of way, if that makes sense! Inside the outer part of the Twist is a soft centre, with a meaty flavour, running right the way through.

The Twists are about 13cm long and around 3cm deep/wide, so it is a substantial chew for your dog and may even be slightly too big for a smaller dog like a Chihuahuas. In fact the packaging does say that these chews are unsuitable for dogs under 9 months old and dogs under 3kg. This may be a very important factor so please bear in mind when buying. It says Border Collies, like Chloe, can have 3-7 per week of these treats and I would say that is about right, although I would lean towards 3, rather than 7 due to price and the size of chew means if they were to eat one everyday you would be significantly increasing their diet, even though these chews are low in fat.

I am happy to let my dog have them for a few weeks or so as they do contain essential vitamins and calcium for her teeth and bones, and at one chew every couple of days she will not really be affected in terms of diet increase.

So overall, these chews seems very good, except the price, which could be a lot smaller!! All that is left is the taste test as usual and Chloe has done the honours for me again. I gave the chew to her last night, about an hour and a half after her main meal. She sniffed the outstretched offering for a full ten seconds before gently taking it in her teeth and carrying off down the hallway. This is unusual in itself for her as it usually, grab, run, gobble. Watching her as she laid down, with the chew on the floor in front of her, I clicked on the stopwatch I had ready as soon as she started to eat. Amazingly, it took nearly five minutes for her to get through this chew. This is a record length for her as it is usually under the minute mark.

I determined from this reaction that she really enjoyed the new treat I had given her. She wanted to savour it as it obviously smelt really good to her (and her only, believe me!) and I am really chuffed it took so long to eat as it means she will digest it easier and the scraping on her teeth to help remove plaque will have been prolonged, which can only be a good thing.

So that’s a thumbs up from me and a thumbs up from Chloe – thanks for reading! Bark!