06/03/2025
🦴 We are 100% Rawhide free! 🦴
When it comes to dog treats we want to be able to offer the most delicious, natural, healthy and most importantly safe treats for your pets.
With this in mind we made the decision very early on that we wouldn’t be stocking any rawhide based treats in our store.
Traditional rawhide chews that can be found in supermarkets,some pet stores and discount stores are made as a by-product to the leather industry. They are made from the inner layers of cow or horse hide and go through a lengthy process to get to the chews that you’d find on the shop floor.
Parts of these processes can include the hides being soaked in a salt brine to delay tissue decay, then into a chemical bath of bleach and hydrogen peroxide, and in some countries where there are fewer regulations, even formaldehyde and arsenic are used to whiten and clean the hide.
After this, the hides are then cleaned, ground or cut, and then glued and shaped.
Unfortunately these kinds of treats are not classified as food for humans or dogs so there are little to no regulations in their production.
Not only this, but they are incredibly difficult for your dog to digest and in some cases have been known to cause choking or even digestive blockages.
Of course there will be dogs that have been eating these kinds of chews for years with no issues, but it only takes one bad experience for things to go wrong quickly, so we’d rather cut that risk out from our shop entirely.
For more information on the production of rawhide check out the link below.
https://www.allaboutdogfood.co.uk/articles/is-rawhide-dangerous-for-dogs
You can however find plenty of 100% natural, air dried treats in store, as well as some other hide alternatives including collagen and zero hide chews, and of course our freezers are always full of raw frozen bones and chews 🍖
Hello from Bertie's - Your family run, independent high street pet store. Specialising in all things natural for your pets.
