What is the Most Affordable Daily Dental Treat?

I recently posted about Bright Bites daily dental treats, which had me pondering the actual cost of feeding dental treats every day. Little things like that really add up! I love collecting data, so I took a tour of the major online retailers to see how much, or how little, it would cost to feed my dogs a daily dental treat every day.

The Criteria

Photo by Erin Koski

For the purpose of comparison, I chose to include only products that were both marketed and packaged for daily use. Though I can find many individually-wrapped dental treats at my local pet stores, I only included those that could also be purchased in a larger quantity. Few people are going to buy 30 individually-wrapped Bright Bites for the month, but plenty will buy four bags of 8. A company that sells a bunch of dental chews in one bag is definitely taking that "daily dental care" thing seriously.

I also chose to specifically compare products intended for a size range that included both of my girls. So most of these are labeled for medium or regular-sized dogs. Sisci Godzilla weighs 28 pounds, and Zip weighs 36 pounds.

The Results

Cheap

The absolute cheapest dental chew marketed for daily use is Dingo Dental Sticks, at 17-cents each if you buy the bag of 48 sticks on Amazon. The next cheapest is Purina's DentaLife treats at 23-cents each if you buy the package of 40, followed by Pedigree DentaStix, Purina Beneful Healthy Smile Dental Twists, and Milkbone Brushing Chews, ranging from $0.33 to $0.41 per chew. Yes, these are all grocery-store brands, mostly made from by-products. I expected them to all be made in China, but surprisingly all but the Dingo treats are made in the USA.

Standard

Greenies makes the classic daily dental chew, before them I don't remember anything being marketed for daily use like that. Their price point is right in the middle of the pack at $0.81 per regular-sized chew in a package of 36. Bright Bites were slightly more expensive at #1 per chew, along with KaNoodles and Ilio TeethTreats.

Absurd

Every time I see Cloud Star's Dynamo Dog dental chews I am horrified by the price. In the largest package sold, these things will set you back a whopping $2.31 per bone. Yes, they are grain-free and potato-free, but they would also cost $70 per month to feed on a daily basis. Yikes!

Surprise!

Pretty much all of the dental treats (with one freakishly expensive exception) are made from wheat, rice, potato, rawhide, or a combination of these. Many of the more affordable ones are made with chicken by-products as well. I decided beforehand that my personal standards for a dental chew product was that it had to be made in the USA without by-products. I expected the least expensive daily dental chew that met these standards to be somewhere in the middle of the price range. 

Nope! It's Pedigree DentaStix, the third from the bottom at $0.33 per chew. Made in the USA. No by-products. Crazy.

I was also very surprised to see Missing Link's Once Daily dental chew towards the cheap end of the spectrum. This product also contains a daily dose of Missing Link's skin and coat supplement, and somehow it's only $0.52 per chew. I had dismissed the idea of daily dental chews as being too expensive, but it looks like they can be surprisingly affordable!

Paw Spa: The Original Cloudstar Buddy Wash

Here's a blast from the past, the original Buddy Wash and Buddy Rinse dog shampoo and conditioner from Cloud Star. I used to wash my dearly departed cocker spaniel in this stuff, followed up with a few Buddy Biscuits for good measure. That was over ten years ago. While this stuff isn't quite that old, it has definitely been kicking around since before Cloud Star changed their package design. I have an original lavender mint Buddy Wash shampoo and matching Buddy Rinse conditioner, and I also have a "Refreshing Rosemary" Buddy Wash shampoo.

Whilst finding the Cloud Star website for this blog post, I stumbled upon the realization that Buddy Biscuits and Buddy Wash are no longer Cloud Star brands. I wasn't sure when exactly this happened, but after some research I'm pretty sure the change was related to the January 2015 merger between Cloud Star and Tiki. Sometime after this point, Buddy Biscuits became their own brand, offering their man-shaped cookies, shampoos, grain-free biscuits, teeny tiny treats, and soft and chewy Buddy Biscuits. Meanwhile, the Cloud Star brand offers Wag More Bark Less biscuits, soft Tricky Trainers treats, and Dynamo Dog chew bones. The two brands are still owned by the same company, but have their own incredibly similar websites with product ranges that overlap significantly.

The current iterations of Buddy Wash are all 2-in-1 conditioning shampoos, with a lavender conditioner also available. I'm not actually sure how old my Buddy Washes are, but I can find pictures of these bottles from reviews and sites as late as 2012 so they may only be 4 years old. Given the shelf life of shampoo though, I guess four years is old enough. Stuff lasts longer when it hasn't been used, so the rosemary shampoo is probably in better shape than the lavender one.

It's worth noting that all Buddy Wash products are supposed to be white. Both of my shampoos are now an amber color, and the conditioner is a bit yellowed as well. I used the lavender shampoo on Brisbane, Sisci, and Ru and it lathered up very nicely. It still smells amazing, and got them all squeaky clean.

The conditioner on the other hand...while it still left Brisbane and Ru soft and silky, it also smelled pretty funky. I guess after a few years conditioner goes rancid. I ended up rinsing them off really good and using something else. And now we know! Thanks for joining me on this little journey of discovery.

Treat Tuesday: Cloud Star Chewy Cheddar Tricky Trainers

Cloud Star's Tricky Trainers are small, moist treats intended for training time. They come in three flavors, and are made from barley flour and tapioca starch. We have the cheddar flavor, the chewy treats also come in salmon and chicken liver flavors. They remind me of Zuke's Mini Naturals, but a little more moist and stinky.

Good For: Mid-value training treats. Popping into puzzle toys. Treating the dogs without getting my hands all gross. Fast treats for medium-large dogs. Tossing across the floor to add excitement at training time.

Not Good For: Super-duper-amazingly-high-value treats for high-distraction environments. Fast treats for itty bitty tiny dogs that will actually need to chew.

How Much We Like Them: Used half the bag in one day. Need get a new bag.

Treat Tuesday: Grain-Free Buddy Biscuits, Oven Baked Cheddar Cheese Flavor

Another tasty treat from Cloud Star, we can't go wrong with Buddy Biscuits. I feed grain-free dog food, and I like having grain-free biscuits for them as well. I'm not on the no-grains bandwagon, but I do like to limit how much they get. These are made in the USA and contain no soy, corn, wheat, or eggs. Grain-free Buddy Biscuits are made with chickpea, pea, tapioca, and potato flours.

Good For: All of the same things original Buddy Biscuits are good for, like stuffing inside puzzle toys and putting at the bottoms of the Kongs before I load them with peanut butter. Gluten-free, so they're good for people with Celiac and people who are pretending.

Not Good For: Keeping whole and beautiful before use. These things break really easy and I don't think I had a single one come out of the box whole.

How Much We Like Them: You see that box? It's empty now.

Treat Tuesday: CloudStar Original Buddy Biscuits Peanut Butter

I've been buying CloudStar Original Buddy Biscuits for my dogs since I first spotted them at Trader Joe's in 1999. They are a nice alternative to Milkbones and other dog biscuits because they don't contain any eggs. Brisbane can't have the Roasted Chicken flavor, but the rest are delightfully Briz-safe. These just contain flour, oil, and peanut butter.

Good For: Goodbye cookies and quick rewards that don't require me to wash the treat-stink off my hands. Brunching up and cramming in the medium-sized Starmark Treat Dispensing Chew Ball and other puzzle toys. Not getting disgusting when left in toys that get lost under the furniture.

Not Good For: Motivation. Dogs will not work very hard for unstinky treats.

How Much We Like Them: Enough to buy a 4lb bag of them.