Sharing one bag of beef heart between your dogs

Beef heart for multiple dogs comes out of one bag, divided by weight rather than by piece. Each dog gets its own daily amount from its own calorie number, the pieces snap so a big dog and a small one can share a single piece, and the handout happens with every dog in its own spot.

How do you split beef heart between dogs of different sizes?

By weight, per dog. The listing names beef heart for dogs of all sizes, adults and puppies, so one bag is the right bag for the whole house. What differs between your dogs is the amount each one gets in a day and the size of piece each one can manage.

The amount is the budget question, covered below. The piece size is a snapping question. A medium piece, which is how the brand's own scorecard rates them, might be one reward for your big dog and several for your small one. Sharing beef heart between a big and a small dog is mostly a matter of breaking the same piece differently.

Keep the bag's directions in view while you do it. The bag says: "Always supervise your dog while feeding." With two or more dogs in the kitchen, that line is the one that matters most.

Does each dog need its own treat budget?

Yes. Two cars in one driveway do not share a gas tank, and two dogs do not share a treat budget. Each dog has a daily calorie number from its food bag or its vet, and that number is the start of the sum.

The treat budget calculator on our product page starts at a 10 percent default and returns each dog's daily ounces. Run it once per dog, write both figures on the bag or the fridge, and you have a treat budget for each dog that nobody has to remember. Adding the two figures together tells you how fast the bag will go.

The bag says: "Not intended as a complete diet." That holds for the dog with the big budget and the dog with the small one, and it holds on days when one of them has a topper and the other does not.

How do you snap one piece into two sizes of reward?

With your fingers, at the bag. The listing says: "Snap a piece in two, then in two again, and one piece has become a handful of rewards." For a two-dog house, stop at different points for different dogs: a half for the big dog, a quarter or smaller for the little one.

The listing calls the pieces firm, and they snap by hand. It also describes them as dry and not greasy, so you can snap a session's worth at once and keep the two sizes in two pockets. Our small dog guide goes into the breaking itself and what to do with the crumbs.

Beef heart is freeze dried raw, so the handling rule applies no matter how many dogs you are feeding. The bag says: "Wash your hands after handling it."

How do you hand out treats to several dogs at once?

Slowly, and in order. A routine for two dogs, which stretches to three or more:

• Snap the pieces first, before either dog is paying attention, so you are not breaking treats with two noses in your hands.
• Give each dog its own spot, a mat or a corner, and hand the pieces out there rather than in the middle of the room.
• Keep one adult watching the whole time, which is the bag's supervise line in practice.
• Have water down before you start. The bag says: "Provide fresh water at all times."
• Wash your hands when the handout is finished and reseal the bag.

The routine is plain on purpose, and it is the same every time.

What if one dog is on a special diet?

Ask that dog's vet before beef heart goes anywhere near its bowl. A vet diet is a vet question, and we are not going to answer it from a treat bag. If the answer is no, the other dogs can still have their beef heart; the job is keeping the handout separate.

In practice that means the dog on the diet gets its own spot and its own approved treat at the same time, so nobody is left out of the routine, and the beef heart stays on the other side of the room. The bag's supervise line does the rest.

For a puppy sharing the house with adults, the listing covers both, and our puppy guide covers how small to snap for the youngest dog in the room.