26 Low Calorie Dog Treats to Help Your Dog Stay Slim in 2025

Just like humans, dogs can struggle with their weight, which can lead to a variety of health issues that are either caused or aggravated by their weight. The good news? You can still treat your pup while helping them stay slim with delicious low calorie dog treats!

In this guide, we’ve put together a list of our favorite low calorie dog treats that we use with our own pups. Over the years, we’ve put a large amount of effort into managing Primmie’s weight since she tries her hardest to be a couch potato and lie in the sun all day. Even if your dog is like Primmie, it’s possible to treat your dog to delicious snacks while keeping their weight managed. Join us as we discuss everything from training treats to higher value treats!

Exercise’s role in managing your dog’s weight

You’ve probably heard the saying “abs are created in the kitchen, not the gym” before. Well, the same is true for your dog. With that caveat, exercise is still an important part of managing your dog’s weight. Besides burning calories, movement (and exercise in particular) will help strengthen your dog’s muscles, joints and improve their overall cardiovascular ability, which will make exercise easier and more fun for them in the future.

In addition, exercise can help minimize or eliminate various health issues. An appropriate weight and level of fitness can help improve conditions like diabetes and heart issues. It also makes issues like osteoarthritis much easier to manage and can drastically lower the risk of joint issues in your pup. One of our pups, Goomba, has been through 3 knee surgeries for ligament tears. Although weight wasn’t a factor for him, it makes joint injuries much more likely and harder to recover from. If you want more information on weight and knee ligament tears, check out VCA Hospital’s Cruciate Ligament Rupture post.

Health considerations for dog treats

There are a few topics we wanted to touch on regarding healthy, low calorie dog treats. The first, and probably most obvious, is to take into account any health issues or sensitivities your dog has. For example, if your pup has pancreatitis, you’ll have to make sure that low calorie dog treats also have a low fat composition. Similarly, if your dog is allergic or sensitive to specific foods, you’ll want to avoid that, as well.

Second, we want our low calorie dog treats to have a reasonable number of ingredients. We prefer single or limited ingredient options, but that’s not always possible, and we’re okay with that. We get a little iffy when the ingredient list is more than a few lines, and to be honest, it’s just unnecessary processing that adds no value to the food. There are so many affordable, low ingredient options that there’s no real reason to get ultra-processed treats for your dog.

What is a low calorie treat for your dog?

If you’re interested in using low calorie dog treats for weight loss, it’s important to know what a low calorie dog treat is. For our purposes, we used anything less than 4 calories per single treat, but use some with more calories, especially if they are easy to break into pieces. We aren’t interested in doing calorie calculations for our pups, especially since they are rarely accurate, and find guessing intuitive enough.

One thing that helped us greatly when we were having issues with Primmie’s weight was to use different treats for different situations. Getting a bully stick for going potty outside is excessive, but a training treat or small treat is perfectly fine. We’ll use easily breakable treats for more routine behavior, like trick training and sniffing, and save higher value ones for special occasions. Do whatever works best for you, but if we break up a Fruitable baked treat into 3 or 4 pieces, Prim is much more excited than if we only give her one treat.

We’ll point out which treats are easy to break apart when we discuss them in one of the next sections. This is a great way to get more rewards out of each treat and one of our favorite options.

How to choose the right treats for your dog

Choosing good low calorie dog treats is easy, as long as you know what you’re looking for. The most obvious advice is to make sure you choose flavors that your pup enjoys. For us, our dogs like meaty treats the best, such as jerky and freeze-dried meats, followed by cheese flavors. We try to focus our low calorie dog treats on having at least one of these flavors to keep them the most excited.

We also recommend using your available local stores to find new treats to try, even though we primarily shop on Chewy and Amazon. We have a few local options, but TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Home Goods all have different types of cheap treats to try for our pups. They love trying new ones, and it prevents us from getting in a rut with the same dog treats every time. Some of our favorite low calorie dog treats on this list were initially purchased from those stores.

Best low calorie dog treats for managing weight

We’ve divided this list into categories based on the type of treat. We use different treats in different situations in order to get the most value from our treats. For example, we’ll try to break up treats into smaller pieces when we’re doing sniffing work. You can use an entire piece of jerky as a reward for your pup, but our pups seem to enjoy it more when they get more treats.

Jerky treats

Jerky treats are our most commonly used low calorie dog treats, and our dogs love them! Jerky treats come in a wide variety of flavors and textures, but most are similar. They tend to be limited ingredient, or at least not have very many, which means they are perfect if your dog has sensitivities to specific ingredients. Some of our favorite times to use jerky treats are for learning new tricks, burning energy, or sniffing based activities, especially since they typically rip apart well.

One of our recent favorite jerky treats (and one of our preferred low calorie dog treats) is Pet Jerky Factory’s jerky! Our pups love the duck and blueberry and turkey and pumpkin flavors the best, but like all the ones we’ve tried. We like that it’s reasonably priced and has limited ingredients, which makes it a great option if your pup has food sensitivities. Since they use human-grade ingredients, you can feel good about feeding this high protein snack to your pup.

One of our favorite ways to use Pet Jerky Factory’s jerky is in canine enrichment toys. It helps spread the jerky flavor to kibble or other lower value treats, which will keep your dog more excited when they’re searching out treats.

Another of our favorite low calorie dog treats that we typically have in our closet is Abound’s jerky bites. Our pups like both the grain-free and grain options and all 3 meat flavors we’ve tried. It’s extremely easy to break apart, which makes it great for more repetitive tasks, like DIY snuffle mats or obedience work. It doesn’t have a strong odor, which is good and bad. You may find it cheaper than on Amazon, as our local grocery store usually stocks it at a reduced price.

One of our pups’ recent favorite low calorie dog treats is Shameless Pets salmon & butternut squash jerky. We’re huge fans of most Shameless Pets dog treats, and you’ll see more from them on this list. It’s a great limited ingredient option and breaks apart better than almost every other treat. There is a duck flavor that we haven’t tried yet, but the salmon flavor seems to be our pups’ favorite jerky option. It works great for any activity that some extra motivation would be helpful, like learning new tricks or running around.

Our first dog jerky that we purchased was Full Moon’s jerky tenders and our pups love them! We’ve used it for a wide variety of purposes, including stuffed bones and as a reward for our favorite games to play with dogs inside. It breaks easily, but not into as small pieces as some other options. Our dogs like the taste and smell a lot, so it’s a great way to spice up less exciting treats, too. It’s a reasonable price for the size, and we usually find it in stock at our local grocery store and Walmart.

Freeze-dried dog treats

Freeze-dried treats are a fantastic option for low calorie dog treats, and they’re the best option if your dog has food sensitivities. Typically containing 1 or 2 ingredients, freeze-dried dog treats have stronger odors, meat flavors, and a satisfying crunch for your dog. We use them as medium-high value treats and as flavor enhancers for kibble or other lower value treats. You can even “rehydrate” them to make a brothy concoction that’s great for frozen enrichments.

One of our recent favorites is Herbsmith’s duck and orange freeze-dried treats. With only 2 ingredients (duck and orange), it’s a clean option for your pup. We use these as standard rewards most of the time, but sometimes Primmie will prance with excitement for them. They’re great to put in DIY dog puzzles or your favorite treat dispensing toy. We recommend them, especially if you don’t like some of the stronger-scented options.

The next few treats will be some of our dogs’ favorite freeze-dried dog treats, and favorites from this list of low calorie dog treats. The first is Stewart’s freeze-dried beef liver, and it’s our most commonly used freeze-dried treat. It’s nice and stinky for pups (but not too bad for humans) and really gets our pups fired up for whatever they’re doing. It’s pretty affordable for a freeze-dried treat, and we use it a lot in frozen enrichments, like Toppl recipes and for some of our Pupsicles.

Next up: Poke’s freeze-dried chicken liver. Our pups seem to love anything that’s fish or liver scented, and this treat makes Primmie prance in place from excitement. As long as your dog isn’t sensitive to chicken, it’s a great affordable option. Most of the time, we get whatever freeze-dried liver treat is the most affordable as they’re all somewhat similar. We use these as a medium or medium-high value treat, and they make a great option for enrichment toys, like the Bob-a-lot or Pet Zone IQ Treat Ball. We highly recommend it!

Our other option is Wag’s freeze-dried beef liver, and it’s just as good as Stewart’s option. The only reason we prefer Stewart’s is that they offer larger sizes that are cheaper. All the same ways to use it apply as with Stewart’s, but one of our pups’ recent favorites is “rehydrating” the beef liver to use as a broth for frozen treats. It’s a great option if your pup needs to watch their weight as it packs a ton of flavor into very few calories and has a lot less sodium than meat broths.

Training treats

Training treats are a very common type of dog treats and what most people think of when they hear “low calorie dog treats”. These treats are small, but perfect for training or sniffing work. In our experience, we see many options that have an absurd number of ingredients, so make sure you are careful with what you purchase. Because of their size, they rarely break into smaller pieces well, but that’s less of an issue since they’re smaller.

Our dog’s favorite training treat (and one of their favorite low calorie dog treats) is Full Moon’s savory bites. They’re strong-smelling for a small treat, which our pups love, and you get a ton of training treats for a reasonable price, which we enjoy. If you have a small dog or want to stretch your treats further, you can actually cut these in half and get even more. We use these treats for activities where we want our dogs to be enthusiastic or as a topper on some of our dog lick mat recipes.

Another favorite of our dogs is Full Moon’s training treats. They’re similar to the savory bites, but thinner and less potent smelling. We won’t spend much time on them here since they’re so similar, but they are organic, if that’s important to you. Our dogs love this treat, too, but like the meatier smell of the savory bites better. You can’t go wrong either way, and we’d recommend these over savory bites if you have a small dog or only feed organic food to your pup.

Next up for our favorite low calorie dog treats are Bocce’s Bakery training treats. Our dogs’ favorite flavor is the duck and blueberry option, but they love them all. Bocce’s is one of our preferred treat brands and tends to have a low number of ingredients in their treats, as well. Their treats are heart shaped and break in half easily, which means you can extend training time and your pup can get more rewards! We can find these most of the time at some of our local discount stores, too, which makes these treats even more affordable.

Our final training treat is Finley’s training bites and they’re always a hit with our dogs. We try to rotate through different treats to mix up what they’re eating and keep things exciting. The shape of these treats typically works better with our favorite snuffle mats. We mostly use these for sniffing, but they work well for obedience training, too! They have 2 calories per treat, which means they’re one of the best from a pure calorie perspective, especially for their size.

Other pre-made dog treats

This section is a catch all for any other dog treats that we routinely use that are low calorie dog treats or can become so through breaking them apart. We use these routinely, and they’re all affordable, too.

Our first option is Charlee Bear’s crunchy treats, and we’ve used a few different treats from them. Goomba and Prim have loved them all, but the original crunch treats are perfect low calorie dog treats for training. Their favorites are the stinkier flavors, specifically the liver ones, but they’re excited about any of them. Charlee Bear’s treats also have a lower number of total ingredients than most other options, which means you won’t have to worry about food sensitivities as much. We like using them in treat dispenser toys, like the IQ treat dispenser, since they don’t leave a residue behind.

One of our recent favorite low calorie dog treats is Riley’s Organic Dog Treats. Our dogs love all the flavors, and they actually smell like their ingredients. They have fewer than 10 organic ingredients per treat, so they’re better for dogs with sensitivities. We like them because they are 5 calories per treat and that we can easily split them into 5 pieces. We use them as low to medium value rewards, especially for sniffing, and they are a surprisingly large amount of treats per bag. Our dogs’ favorite flavors are the molasses and sweet potato flavors.

Next up are Fruitable skinny mini dog treats, and we’ve had a Fruitable treat in our closet continuously for the last few years. They’re cheap with ingredients you can pronounce, and our dogs are huge fans. The skinny minis are much closer to training treats than normal treats, but can work for both. Our pups’ favorite flavors are pumpkin or any of the meat flavors, but you can’t go wrong with any of them. The full-size Fruitable dog treats are even cheaper and possible to break apart, if you don’t mind doing it. We can get 4 treats from one Skinny Mini and 4-6 treats from one full-size Fruitable, depending on how it breaks.

While not a normal option for low calorie dog treats, Shameless Pets soft-baked dog treats work great, as long as you don’t mind breaking them apart. They’re always affordable and contain a reasonable amount of ingredients, but our favorite part is how they break apart. Although these treats have 15-20 calories per treat, we can break them up into a ton of smaller treats. Prim loves sniffing these out of her favorite snuffle devices, and Goomba enjoys doing tricks for them. We’d highly recommend them and routinely find them at discount stores for even cheaper!

Fruits and vegetables

Fruits and vegetables can make great low calorie dog treats, as long as your dog likes them. Primmie loves almost all of them, but Goomba is much more selective. They are fantastic ways to mix up your dog’s food intake while keeping it healthy and with a moderate amount of calories. There are a variety of ways you can use them as treats, but some of our favorites are as training treats and ingredients in frozen enrichment.

Before serving your pup fruits and vegetables, head over to our post on fruits and vegetables safe for dogs to make sure what you want to feed is dog safe. If your dog has ingested something unsafe, contact the ASPCA’s poison control hotline immediately. If you’re curious about the risks, check out our strawberry preserves for dogs guide to get an idea about what they are.

How you can use fruits and vegetables as low calorie dog treats will vary depending on your dog’s preferences. For us, Primmie loves almost every fruit and vegetable, which means we can use them as standard treats, for training, or even as high-value treats sometimes, such as in our DIY stuffed bones. Goomba, on the other hand, will not eat them uncooked and prefers them mixed into his frozen enrichments, such as Toppls or Kongs, with only a few exceptions.

Some of our pups’ favorite fruits and vegetables are pumpkin and sweet potato. Prim’s favorites that Goomba doesn’t like are bananas, berries, and carrots. Don’t be afraid to try anything that’s dog safe; you may be surprised what your dog likes!

Other human foods

There’s a large variety of human foods that can double as low calorie dog treats, if you’re willing to put in some work. A few of our favorites are lean meats, specifically chicken, and string cheese. Both are healthy snacks, especially if you opt for the lower sodium options, and they are staples in our treat rotation. Goomba is a lunatic for chicken, and Primmie loves it just as much. We typically use these as high value rewards for our pups.

Some of our favorite ways to use cheese are to encourage more enthusiastic behavior, like when learning new tricks, loading specific commands, or our favorite inside games. After Goomba’s recovery from CCL surgery, we had to teach him how to dig on a blanket to help his recovery. We used string cheese for this, and it turns out both of our pups love performing the behavior!

We use unflavored chicken as low calorie dog treats to help persuade Goomba to do his physical therapy or for our DIY stuffed bones. We stuff some chicken with a little peanut butter into a hollow bone and use it as a distraction for our pups while we eat. They love and expect it now, which is fine by us since we get distraction-free meals while they’re having a great time.

If you want to use the chicken for training or sniffing, you can rip up the chicken into “shredded” portions to reduce the calories even more and get more treats out of it. The same tip applies to string cheese, too, and we can break it into a ton of small sections that are less than 1 calorie each.

PBFit simply peanut

Technically, this is another human food that doubles for low calorie dog treats, but we wanted to call it out specifically. PBFit simply peanut is a single-ingredient powder that is marketed as a peanut butter substitute. For us, it’s been a game changer in allowing more peanut butter intake for our dogs that contains fewer calories.

To use it, you mix some peanut powder and water together until it forms a mixture that looks like peanut butter. That’s it! We use it as a substitute for times when we use peanut butter in our dogs’ enrichment, like with lick mats or frozen lick mat recipes, but it works even better when it’s blended like we do in some of our Pupsicle refill recipes! It’s also a great option for bath time or other similar situations where your dog needs some help to get through an experience.

However you use it, it’s extremely helpful in managing your dog’s weight, especially if you use peanut butter as a reward or during training. PBFit simply peanut has one third of the calories of traditional peanut butter, which means you can use even more and still help your pup lose weight! We started using PBFit when Goomba started showing signs of a CCL (rear knee) injury to keep him entertained while recovering. We credit it with helping manage his weight until he recovered from surgery.

“Supercharged” dog food

Next up for our favorite low calorie dog treats: supercharged dog food. The idea is simple: put something stinky that your dog loves in a small bag of dry food. The smell will spread to the kibble in the bag, making it more enticing than standard dry food.

Whatever your dog likes is perfect for this, but some of our favorites are bully sticks, freeze-dried beef liver, or even fish skins. Our dogs love them all, but the fish skin is the stinkiest and the most effective for us. Your dog may have a different opinion, so try some options to see what they like!

The best part is that it uses their own food, which means you can withhold some of your dog’s meal and then make them work for it! Some of our favorite ways to use this treat are for snuffle mats or for tricks that your dog already knows well. If your pup is super motivated by food, like our Primmie, you can use it for other more exciting training, like obedience work or sniffing games.

Frozen enrichment

For the final of our favorite low calorie dog treats, we’ll discuss frozen enrichment. Freezing your dog’s enrichment will dramatically extend the duration of your pup’s time having fun. Our dogs love their frozen enrichment, and it doubles or triples the time they get entertainment from a Kong or a lick mat.

Some of our staple ingredients are peanut butter, chicken, carrots, oats, cheese, and PBFit simply peanut. You can put anything dog-safe into your pup’s frozen enrichment, especially if you’re willing to blend it. Larger toys like Toppls or some Pupsicles can have ingredients go in without blending if the size is sufficient. One of the easiest options is to let freeze-dried beef liver soak in water, which makes a sort of broth that’s perfect for freezing.

We’ve written extensively about frozen enrichment, and here are some of our favorites:

• Frozen lick mat recipes
• Frozen Kongs
• Frozen Toppls
• Frozen Pupsicle recipes

Ways to use low calorie dog treats for your pup

You can incorporate low calorie dog treats into your dog’s diet by replacing treats that aren’t low calories, but if you want to get a bit more creative, we have some ideas for you.

Our most common way is by incorporating them into training or obedience work. We do a lot of training and enrichment with our pups, and using a treat that your dog is actually excited about makes the process a lot more fun. One of our favorites is the dig behavior, and our two favorite options are savory bites or string cheese. Both of our pups get actually excited when we throw a blanket on the floor because they know it’s dig time. A quality reward makes them perform even basic commands like sit and shake with much more enthusiasm.

Another excellent option is using low calorie dog treats in DIY dog puzzles, DIY stuffed bones, or other food-based enrichment. The process is similar to “supercharging” your dog’s kibble. Placing some freeze-dried beef liver or similar treats in with other less exciting treats is a great way to keep your dog motivated. We try to throw a mixture of kibble, “boring” treats, and exciting treats to keep them as engaged as possible. A little will go a long way, especially if you use a stinkier treat.

We’ve already mentioned this in a previous section, but freezing our dog’s enrichment really has been a game changer. It extends our dogs’ food-based enrichment by 2 or 3 times, depending on the device and mixture.

Common misconceptions about weight loss and treats

Misconception 1 – All human food is bad for your dog

We’ve touched on this in a few different sections, but to sum it up, not all human food is bad for your dog. Foods like dog-safe fruits and vegetables, chicken, cheese, and xylitol-free peanut butter are perfect options for your furry friend, as long as they are in reasonable quantities. Feeding your dog pizza isn’t the best idea, but there is a wide variety of human foods that double as low calorie dog treats without you feeling bad.

Misconception 2 – You can exercise your dog to weight loss

Similar to humans, dogs can’t simply exercise their way to weight loss. It’s much easier for both you and your dog if you combine an improved diet with increased activity. No amount of running with your pup will balance out eating 50% too many calories.

If you’ve been reducing your dog’s calories and they still aren’t losing weight, discuss the situation with your vet. That is one of the ways we discovered that Primmie has hypothyroidism. Since starting treatment for it, she’s lost weight and become more active without us changing anything.

Misconception 3 – If your dog needs to lose weight, stop giving treats

Another common misconception is that if you want your dog to lose weight, you need to quit giving treats. This is not at all true! Serving an appropriate amount of dry kibble will allow your dog to have tasty rewards, whether it’s for being cute or training. If you use low calorie dog treats, you can get significantly more treats per calorie, which means more tail wags from your pup.

Conclusion

Low calorie dog treats are a simple change to help manage your pup’s weight without decreasing their treat allotment. Even if your pup doesn’t have a weight issue, low calorie dog treats can allow your furry friend to get more treats with less worrying about their weight. Our dogs’ favorites are the freeze-dried meat treats and jerky, but they love them all! Primmie has yet to meet a treat that she doesn’t like.

Do you have other favorite low calorie dog treats? Give us a shout by email or on Instagram @therulybully and share your favorites! If we like the suggestion, we’ll give you a shout out in our post.

Have fun!