Reward Your Pooch With Delicious Sweet Potato Dog Treats

What Are Sweet Potato Dog Treats?

Sweet potato treats are a popular vegetarian snack for dogs that have been around for decades. Sweet potato is a safe, healthy, and natural food for dogs to eat and has great health benefits. They’re made from either boiling, cooking, or dehydrating sweet potatoes. A wholesome treat, they don’t include any other additives or ingredients. As a single-ingredient, all-natural dog treat, its sweet flavor is mouthwatering and delicious!

Because of their often dehydrated nature, sweet potato dog treats are perfect for satisfying a dog’s chewing or teething needs. Chewing is essential to promoting healthy, strong teeth and gums, and for younger dogs, it is a great way to relieve teething pain. Rather than chewing on furniture and other items at your home, sweet potato dog treats are a great way to reduce destructive chewing and also provide your dog with a sweet treat.

What Are the Benefits of Sweet Potato Dog Treats?

Extremely nutritious

Sweet potato dog treats are rich in vitamins, especially vitamin A, which promotes healthy skin and coat and supports eye, nerve, and muscle health. In a single ingredient, sweet potato provides your dog with much of the nutrition they need for a healthy, long life.

Help with digestive issues

Fiber is essential for a working digestive system and should be a regular part of your dog’s diet. Sweet potato dog treats are high in fiber, which encourages regular and healthy bowel movements. Sweet potatoes are also helpful for alleviating constipation and diarrhea. 

Improve teeth and gum health

Since dehydrated sweet potato dogs are chewy, they can replace traditional chew toys (often made of plastic) while also providing nutrition. Chewing helps improve dental hygiene and also reduces bad breath. When dogs chew, their teeth are cleaned and the gums are strengthened. Not only do sweet potato treats help with your dog’s oral health, but they also release endorphins that make your dog feel happy, reducing your dog’s negative and destructive behaviors.

Support healthy vision

By offering your dog sweet dog potato treats, you’re giving them an ample source of vitamin A, an extremely important nutrient for the healthy growth of your dog. A vitamin A deficiency may cause night blindness. However, a healthy amount of vitamin A — such as from sweet potato dog treats — will improve your dog’s absorption of light, help protect their retina, and allow your dog to be able to see much clearer at night.

Reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer

Due to their rich yellow, gold, and orange color, sweet potatoes are a great source of beta-carotene, which is an antioxidant that can lower the risk of heart disease and certain types of cancer. 

Support the immune system

Sweet potatoes are wonderfully full of nutritional goodness. They provide antioxidants, are anti-inflammatory, and contain disease-combatting nutrients.

Problems With Consuming Sweet Potato Dog Treats

Overconsumption of sweet potatoes

An excess of vitamin A is known to be harmful even to humans, so eating too many sweet potato treats may be harmful to your dog. Signs to look out for are rapid or quick-onset vomiting or drowsiness. Vitamin A toxicity takes time, but keep an eye out for the main symptom, which is stiffness, particularly in your dog’s neck and range of movements.

Feeding dogs raw sweet potato

Raw sweet potato can cause stomach aches and digestive upset. More seriously, raw sweet potatoes can also cause intestinal blockage. If you want to give your dog sweet potatoes for the health benefits, we strongly recommend that you cook the sweet potatoes fully or buy sweet potato dog treats.

What Else Should You Consider?

Size of the dog

Sweet potato dog treats come in different sizes and hardness. Depending on the size of your dog, the sweet potato dog treat may be too soft or too hard. We recommend choosing a sweet potato dog treat option that matches your dog’s size. For example, for extra small dogs, we recommend sweet potato sticks or sweet potato fries, while for large dogs we recommend thick-cut sweet potato treats.

Diet

Choosing sweet potato dog treats and whether it’s right for your dog depends on your dog and their diet. If your dog already has a healthy, wholesome diet, the added nutrients and carbs from sweet potato dog treats may not be worth the health benefits, and may actually cause your dog to gain excess weight. Treats are meant to be used for training and rewarding purposes, so using them to round out your dog’s diet depends on your dog and the nutrients they are (or aren’t) receiving from their everyday meals. You could try adding these nutritious treats to your dog’s diet as a supplement to help with any digestive problems they may have.

Natural

We recommend choosing treats that are made with natural ingredients and do not contain any additives because treats with high amounts of sugar and fat are not good for your dog.

Other sources of vitamins

While vitamins are a healthy and important component of your dog’s diet, be sure to keep track of the amount and types of vitamins your dog consumes. Staying either just below or at the recommended amount for each vitamin is essential because excessive amounts of certain vitamins, such as vitamin A and vitamin D, may be harmful to your dog. 

Observation

Remember, always keep a close eye on your dog while they’re chewing and enjoying their sweet potato treat. While dogs enjoy treats, they also sometimes chew or ingest other items (both within and outside of the house) that are harmful to their stomachs and health. A good rule of thumb is to always keep your dog within eyesight when they’re chewing on a chew, treat, or toy.