I’m a lucky participant of Chewy.com‘s Blogger Outreach Program, meaning I get to try out a lot of different pet products in exchange for my honest reviews. The following review are the thoughts and opinions of yours truly, and no way am I paid to endorse the following product.

As a pet photographer, I go through BAGS of treats to keep my subjects (happy and) motivated during the session. Some of them will eat anything that you stick in their face, while others have, how do I put this, have more refined tastes. ;p

Oh, I should probably clarify for the record that I’m talking about dogs and cats—not humans, haha. Although some of the treats I go through both sound and smell delicious enough where one could actually possibly entertain the idea of eating a couple of treats.

This month I had the opportunity to review Natural Balance Wild Pursuit Grain-Free Dog Treats. Having fed my cats Natural Balance in the past, I know it’s a high quality food (although I think the company may have been bought out some time in the past couple of years, so not sure if that’s changed). I typically use poultry or peanut-butted based treats during my sessions, as I figure these tend to be on the “safer” side for palatability.

I decided to be adventurous this month and try the Lamb Lung treats. The lamb is sourced from New Zealand, which I know is something they’re well known for (so it’s gotta be good right?). I thought the lung thing was kind of weird, to be honest, but I know in the wild, wolves/canines would eat the entire carcass of their kill. So what may sound gross to us is probably really delicious to animals. Or at least that’s my reasoning, ha.

Opening up the bag, the first things I notice are how light the treats are (like holding a cheese puff). And how hard they are. Like really hard. Like so hard that when I try to break them in half, the only thing that happens is that my fingers hurt from trying so hard. I know they’re dehydrated, but I’ve used dehydrated treats before, and I was able to easily break them in half. In my book, not being able to break the treats into bite-size pieces is already a no go for me. 1) Buying high-quality bags of treats can get expensive, so I need to make them last as long as possible 2) I don’t exactly want to stuff my subjects into a food coma. P.S. I included an almost orthogonal view of what a treat looks like aka in case your little heart has always wondered what these treats look like up close and person. Of course, they vary in shape and size.

The next test in my book are of course, the ones who will be eating them! I decided to test them on Riley and Rory, who are the cutest BFFs. They each took one but immediately spat them out, which is not promising and made me immediately think they were duds. (See faces of disgust).

But then I tried them on a foster that I was photographing for a rescue, and she loved them! See Nutmeg’s face after eating treat below (P.S. She is also available for adoption via Big Fluffy Dog Rescue).

So in conclusion, while these seem like high quality treats for the owner who wants something that’s a limited ingredient, it’s not a win all in the sense that it’ll appeal to every dog. So I would purchase if only you know your dog will eat anything and everything, and has a taste partial to lamb. As for me, I will most likely not be purchasing them for use with my clients–sorry, NB!

Many thanks again to Chewy.com for the opportunity to review these treats. Until next time!