Focus Group

Last August, I was asked whether I would mind reviewing the book "Duke's Tails" and, if I liked it, recommend it to my readers on the dog blog. You can read the review in my entry, "Duke's Recipe".

Justin, the company representative who contacted me about Duke's Tails back then, contacted me again in November and asked me whether I would be interested in reviewing another product... or rather, whether Abby would be interested in reviewing in another product, since it happens to be a dog food.

I thought long and hard about it.

As most of you already know, I'm terribly picky about the type of dog foods that I feed because so many store brand foods are just chock full of corn and wheat, two major causes for allergies in dogs, assorted food colorings that cause cancer, and flavor aids such as sugar and salt that can be harmful. On top of that, I read food labels carefully - if the first five ingredients are not natural ... and I mean, natural to the tune of 'beef' instead of 'beef by-product' or 'bone meal' ... I will not feed it.

And lastly, and more importantly, I don't believe in feeding "sample foods" because you cannot tell by a small sample how well your dog will do on it, and you can't simply feed a whole different food overnight - switching foods needs to be a long process to avoid upset stomachs and other health issues.

(On a side note ... if you're interested in finding out how to read dog food labels properly, and what kind of ingredients to avoid, check out this great website for more information.)

I explained this to Jason and he asked how I would feel about testing some of the dog treats they were developing since I was uncomfortable with testing a new food. Abby generally does fine with treats and she enjoys chewy bones, so I told him we'd give them a try.

A couple of days later, we received a brown UPS box.


Like most dog food products, they are packaged attractively for the human purchaser. We received two different types of dog chews that are made to resemble natural bones filled with bone marrow. The larger of the two was packaged by itself in a reddish-orange wrapper, and the smaller treats were packaged two to a bag in a yellow wrapper.

I took them out and read the ingredients while Abby eagerly checked out the box and attempted to take a still-packaged bone from it. Although this is a product that is going to be sold at pet chain stores such as PetsMart, and likely also at your local supermarket, the ingredients are better than most brands found in those places ... there are lots of things that are clear and straightforward and don't include chemicals you can't pronounce and products with a name ending in "meal". I would not consider it to be 100% organic, human-grade ingredients, but it's a far cry better than most products out there.

And let me tell you, they must be putting crack in these things. Okay, maybe not crack, but something that sure gets my picky eater's attention. She couldn't wait to sink her teeth into one of those, and after I unpacked one and savored the very nice Bar-B-Q flavor that made me want to go out and have some BBQ for dinner, I let her get into it.


Trust me, the treat did not last long, which is fairly unusual in this household, especially with a "hard" chew bone and with my picky eater. She seems to have really enjoyed it, and was looking for more afterwards even though I went and put them away for another day. The couple of times after that I gave her the others, she was just as enthusiastic about them as she was about the first one.

If I have any complaints, they would probably be that they a) should not be labeled as "long lasting chews" if you have a large dog who enjoys chewing, because they don't last very long, and b) while not terribly so, they are pretty messy. The first one left some big stains on Abby's dog bed, though no worse than a raw marrow bone probably would.


Overall, I'll have to give the new product 3 out of 5 stars for being a good, fun treat, and being a far cry better than some of the junk in the pet food aisle. Stars lost for mess, short duration, and for the fact that I would like to see this go even more toward human-grade, organic, high quality food, rather than just being a better commercial grade food.

The product line will include dog food, cat food, dog treats, and cat treats, and hit US stores nationwide in March 2007. The product is being labeled "The Goodlife Recipe", and is being produced by the Mars Petcare Company, a subsidiary of Masterfoods who also owns the pet food brands Pedigree, Sheba, Whiskas, and Cesar, and the human Mars snackfoods.