Best Dog Treat Pouch Kit for Dog and Cat Households
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You have a dog and a cat, and you keep buying two sets of treats for one afternoon out. Three of the four bags here work for either animal, so a single pouch covers the trail and the kitchen counter when you get home. The cheddar stays the dog's.
The household this pouch is built around
One dog, one cat, one person doing the packing. The dog is out for two or three hours on a Saturday and the cat is waiting by the door when you get back, expecting the same deal. If you feed a dog only, you do not need three shared proteins, and our notes on treat training a picky eater will get you to a shorter list. Anyone shopping mainly for the cat can use the same three fish bags in much smaller pieces.
What goes in the bag
Four proteins and one carrier. Each bag is here for a different job on the walk, and one of them is worth holding back.
Our freeze dried pink salmon is one ingredient, Alaskan pink salmon, in a 1.5 ounce pouch, and its guaranteed analysis lists crude protein at a minimum of 66 percent. It breaks into flakes rather than snapping into clean pieces, which makes it the messiest of the four in a pocket and the easiest to portion down for a cat. Skip it if your cat turns its nose up at fish. The dog will finish the bag alone and you are back to one flavor per animal.
Freeze dried baby octopus comes in a 2 ounce bag, single ingredient, with crude fiber listed at a maximum of 18 percent. Most dogs in our part of Chester County have eaten chicken and beef their whole lives and have never once met an octopus, so it holds attention at the trailhead better than anything else in the pouch. It is also the strangest thing you will hand a stranger's dog, so keep that one to yourself.
Scallops come in a 2 ounce bag, one ingredient, moisture listed at a maximum of 16 percent. This is the small, dry, high value piece you hold back for the recall you actually need, the one at the parking lot end of the trail with a road twenty feet away. Put the scallops in a separate corner of the bag so you are not fishing past salmon flakes to find them.
Cheddar cheese bites are the dog's reward and nobody else's. One 8 ounce bag, one ingredient, crude fat listed at a minimum of 50 percent, and the pieces snap apart clean instead of crumbling into the seam of a jacket pocket. That 8 ounce bag is the largest in the kit, so it is the one you portion into the pouch rather than carry whole.
The treat bag from 2 Hounds Design carries all of it and adds a poop bag holder and a collapsible water bowl in the same piece, made in Indian Trail, North Carolina. It rides on a belt or a pack strap and opens with one hand, which matters more than it sounds when the other hand has a leash in it. 2 Hounds Design items are sold and shipped by 2 Hounds Design through Shopify Collective and arrive separately.
What we left out
No squeeze paste, no semi moist training roll. Both work well in a kitchen and both go greasy in a warm pack by the second hour, and a tube that leaks into a bag with four open treat bags in it ruins the whole afternoon. We also left out a second dedicated cat treat, since the salmon, octopus and scallops already cover the cat and a fifth bag is just more weight for the same result.
Loading it the night before
Do this at the counter, not in the car. Open the cheddar and put a handful in the main pocket, then add a dozen pieces of scallop into the smaller pocket so the two never mix. Salmon and octopus travel best in their own resealed bags inside the pack rather than loose in the pouch, and you pull them out at a stop. Load the bag holder before you leave the house. Back home, break two or three flakes of salmon off for the cat while the dog is still drinking. Both animals get paid in the same minute, and the cat stops learning that a leash coming off the hook means it gets nothing.
What one pouch replaces
Two bags, a nesting bowl and a roll of waste bags loose in a pocket. The bowl folded into the treat bag is the piece that does the most work here, because it removes the separate bowl from the pack entirely. Buying three shared proteins instead of a dog set and a cat set also means you are rotating flavors for both animals out of the same shelf rather than running two.
Questions
These come up most often from people carrying treats for two species.
Can the cat have the cheddar cheese bites?
We list the cheddar as a dog treat, so that is how we use it. The three seafood bags are the ones we make for both dogs and cats, and they are the ones to reach for when the cat is watching.
How long does a 1.5 ounce pouch of salmon last?
It depends entirely on how big a piece you tear off. A hiker paying a dog every few minutes on a two hour loop goes through far more than someone handing out one piece a day at home. That is why the salmon rides in the pack as backup rather than in the pouch.
Is the bowl in the treat bag big enough for a real hike?
It is sized for a drink at a stop, not for a whole afternoon of water. If your route has no creek in it, carry a bottle as well and use the folded bowl as the thing you pour into.
Related guides
Three more kits from the trail cluster, which sits on our bundle guides hub with the rest of them. Every bag we make is listed under freeze dried dog treats, and Explore sorts them by protein, life stage and format.
