I Tried my Chi's Treats - and Here's What I Found

I want to be clear about something before we begin, which is that I did not plan to eat my dog's treats. Nobody plans this. You do not wake up at the age of forty-six and think, today is the day I find out what a chicken-and-pumpkin training morsel tastes like. It happens to you, the way most of the bad decisions of my life have happened to me, which is gradually and then all at once and usually in the kitchen.

What happened was this. My chihuahua, whose name is Biscuit and who weighs roughly six pounds when wet, has approximately forty-one varieties of treat in our pantry. I am not making this up. I counted, because my wife asked how many bags of dog treats one small dog could possibly require, and I said, with confidence, "a few." The answer was forty-one. We have more snack options for the dog than for the human members of the household, who are expected to eat things like vegetables and leftovers.

So I got curious. This is the part where everyone in the comment section of my life leans in to ask if I am feeling alright.

The Tasting Begins, Against My Better Judgment

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I started with the "salmon and sweet potato wellness bite." I would like to report that it tasted like salmon. It did not taste like salmon. It tasted like the IDEA of salmon, as described to someone who has never seen the ocean, by a person who was also lying. I gave it a 4 out of 10 (and the 4 was charity, the kind of trophy you hand a child who spent the whole soccer game eating grass).

Biscuit, watching from the floor, made the face. If you have a chihuahua you know the face. It is the face of a creature who has reviewed your recent choices and reached a conclusion, and the conclusion is not flattering. She has six pounds of opinions and they are all about me.

The second treat was a "low-fat lamb morsel," for dogs watching their figure. I do not know what figure a chihuahua is watching, given that Biscuit's entire physique is roughly a baked potato wearing a sweater, but I respect the marketing. This one I spit into the sink. I am not proud of this. I am a grown man who spit a lamb morsel into his own sink while his dog watched, and somewhere in the world, statistically, someone else was doing the exact same thing at the exact same moment (and we will never meet, which is probably for the best).

A Brief, Sincere Interruption

Here is the thing nobody tells you. The dog does not care that the treats are bad. The dog has never once cared. Biscuit greets a sweet-potato wellness bite with the same full-body, tail-rotating-like-a-helicopter joy she brings to a filet mignon, or to my return home after the catastrophic eternity of eleven minutes away. She does not grade on a curve. Everything is a 10. The treat is a 10. The walk is a 10. The square of afternoon sun on the carpet is a 10. I am, somehow, also a 10, despite the evidence.

Anyway. Back to the part where I keep eating dog food.

The Duck Incident

The third item was a "chewy duck fillet strip," and I need you to understand that I was scared of it before I touched it. It had a texture. I do not want my food to have a texture before I have committed to it. It was slimy in a confrontational way, as if it had been waiting in the bag specifically for me, building resentment. I picked it up. I put it down. I picked it up again. My dog, at this point, had given up on me and gone to take a nap (the chihuahua equivalent of a one-star review with no words in it, just the single word "why").

I gave the duck fillet a 3, and the 3 was for emotional damage. I am not making this up. I rated the trauma.

The fourth and final treat was a "spring vegetable and coconut" something, and I saved it for last because, against every law of God and decency, it was good. It was genuinely good. It tasted like a slightly confused cracker that had recently visited a spa. I gave it an 8 and went back for a second one. I am a man who has now, voluntarily, twice, eaten a dog treat, and the worst part is that I would do it a third time, and the bag is right there, and I am only human, and barely.

What I Learned, If Anything

People ask why you would do this. A reasonable person on the internet might write "are u feeling alright at all," and to that person I say: define alright. I have a dog who thinks I hung the moon, a pantry with forty-one varieties of treat, and approximately zero varieties of self-control.

I do not recommend this experiment. Dog treats are formulated for dogs, you should eat your own food like a functioning adult, and a man eating his pet's snacks for ninety minutes on a Tuesday is a cautionary tale (not a lifestyle, and not a meal plan, and please do not write to ask for the brands). Eat the vegetables. Eat the leftovers. They are right there, getting older, the way we all are.

But if you ever want to know exactly how much your chihuahua loves you, do not watch how she eats the good treats. Watch how she eats the bad ones. She gives the lamb morsel a 10 too. She gives everything a 10. I have spent forty-six years learning to be that easy to please and gotten precisely nowhere, and the dog figured it out in six pounds and three years. That, more or less, is the whole report. The coconut one really is an 8, though. I checked. Twice.