Dog treats: how many calories, how much is allowed and how much food to take out of the bowl

Take a five-year-old, 10 kg beagle who goes for walks every day and eats his 159 g of dry food. On walks he earns cubes of cheese for “sit”, and in the evening he keeps watch by the table until he gets a sausage. The bowl the next morning is the same, because a sausage seems like nothing.

Treats should make up no more than about 10% of a dog's daily calories, as WSAVA puts it. For a 10 kg dog with normal activity, that's about 63 kcal a day: 18 g of hard cheese or 121 g of apple, but only 23 g of sausage (energy values from the USDA FoodData Central database). The beagle's evening sausage weighs 51 g and on its own exceeds this budget. By how many times, and how much food then has to come out of the bowl, I'll show with numbers.

Where does the 10% rule come from, and can you give more?

The 10% rule is written in the guidelines of WSAVA, the World Small Animal Veterinary Association: treats “should not exceed about 10% of the daily calorie allowance” (WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee, 2018).

In the WSAVA 2011 screening table, the 10% limit works as a warning sign. Snacks, treats and table food above 10% of calories are listed there next to a body condition below 4 or above 5 points, and such a flag means an extended nutritional assessment is needed (Freeman et al., 2011).

The “10–20%” rule, which also turns up online, does not match the WSAVA documents.

Why the limit is set at exactly 10% was tested in 2025. Researchers took 226 dry diets for adult dogs and 170 kinds of dog treats, replaced 10% of the calories with treats, and all the diets kept the minimum protein and fat under FEDIAF standards (Príncipe et al., Vet Sci 2025). Vitamins and minerals were not counted in this work, and for a share above 10% there is no safety data at all.

What's left is to convert percentages into calories for a dog of a specific weight.

How many calories for treats can a dog of your weight have?

For a 10 kg dog with normal activity, the treat budget is 63 kcal a day; for a 3 kg dog, 26 kcal; and for a 40 kg dog, 178 kcal.

The treat budget is 10% of the daily calorie allowance for everything the dog eats outside the bowl. We calculate the allowance the same way as the portion calculator: 70 × (weight in kg)^0.75 × 1.6 for normal activity. For a calm or neutered dog, the factor is 1.3 and the budget is about 19% smaller: 51 kcal for the beagle.

In-house calculation. Grams are calculated for dry food at 397 kcal/100 g, the DELICATE energy value (metabolisable energy, calculated per NRC 2006). How the allowance itself is calculated is covered in the article on food amount by weight.

The last column already hints that the same sausage costs a small dog more.

Can you give a dog one sausage?

A whole sausage fits within the budget only for a large dog: 51 g of sausage provides 141 kcal (USDA FoodData Central), which is 8% of a 40 kg dog's allowance and 38% of a 5 kg dog's.

A sausage from the table is considered a trifle; it's just one, after all. For the beagle, it's 141 kcal against a budget of 63.

That's 2.2 daily budgets in one bite.

The idea of a trifle breaks down with small dogs, because calorie needs grow more slowly than weight: a 40 kg dog weighs four times as much as the beagle, but needs only 2.8 times as many calories.

The beagle can have 23 g of sausage, less than half, and the budget is used up. Check the ingredients for onion and garlic: dogs must not have them at all (see the article on foods that are dangerous for dogs).

With the rest of the food from the fridge, the arithmetic is the same; only the grams differ.

How many grams of cheese, sausage or bread can a dog have?

For a 10 kg dog, the treat budget allows 18 g of hard cheese, 24 g of bread or 7.8 g of pork fatback a day (USDA FoodData Central).

The foods in the table are from the American USDA database; the composition of Ukrainian products may differ. If you have a label, calculate it yourself: grams = budget in kcal ÷ kcal per 100 g × 100.

Pork fatback is 88.7% fat, and in a study of 198 dogs with pancreatitis and 187 without, table scraps were associated with an odds ratio of 2.2 (Lem et al., JAVMA 2008). The association does not prove cause. Peanut butter is only suitable without xylitol (WSAVA).

There are also foods of which dozens of times more fit into the same budget.

Which treats are lowest in calories?

The fewest calories are in cucumber (15 kcal per 100 g), boiled pumpkin (20), watermelon (30) and carrot (41) according to USDA FoodData Central, so for a 10 kg dog the treat budget allows 420 g of cucumber or 154 g of carrot.

WSAVA also recommends fruit and vegetables as low-calorie treats; its examples include melon, watermelon, apples and carrots.

With fruit, the trap is different, because it's counted by the piece. An apple is usually given whole, since it's light. A medium 182 g apple provides 95 kcal, which is 15% of the beagle's allowance and one and a half of his budgets. What fits into the budget is 121 g, two thirds of an apple without the core.

What's left is to deal with the bowl, from which something has to be taken out after treats.

How much food should you take out of the bowl if your dog ate a sausage?

Divide the treat calories by 3.97 and take that many grams of 397 kcal/100 g dry food out of the bowl: for one sausage it's 36 g, for a medium apple 24 g.

Energy values per USDA FoodData Central; beagle's allowance 630 kcal; “take out” = kcal ÷ 3.97.

Compensation has a limit. The beagle can “work off” a whole sausage if you take out 36 g of food, but that day treats will provide 22% of calories, twice the WSAVA limit. FEDIAF classes treats as complementary pet food not intended to contribute significantly to the daily ration, and here the sausage replaces more than a fifth of the bowl.

That's why the beagle's plan is made up of grams weighed out in advance.

How do you give treats so your dog doesn't gain weight?

To keep treats from adding weight, a 10 kg dog with normal activity gets 143 g of 397 kcal/100 g dry food a day instead of 159 g, and the remaining 63 kcal go to treats.

• If the beagle gets treats every day, weigh out 143 g of food in the morning for the whole day and don't add any more.
• If you want both cheese on the walk and a sausage in the evening, cut off 9 g of cheese and 11 g of sausage in the morning: together that's 63 kcal.
• If the beagle still got a whole sausage, take 36 g of food out of that same day's portion.
• If your dog weighs something else, find its row in the budget table or enter its weight in the portion calculator: 10% of the kilocalories shown is its budget, and the formula with the label will give you the grams of treats.

The beagle from the intro loses nothing. The cheese cubes on walks stay; they're just cut in the morning from 9 g, the evening sausage becomes an 11 g piece, and the bowl holds 143 g instead of 159.

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