Why Fish
Almost every treat aisle is chicken and beef. We built a company around fish instead, and there are four reasons for that — one about dogs, two about what is actually in a fish skin, and one about not wasting food.
1. It is a protein most dogs have never met
Chicken and beef are in nearly everything a dog eats — the kibble, the training treats, the dental chew, the thing that fell off the counter. Repeated exposure is how food sensitivities tend to develop, which is why the proteins that cause the most trouble are simply the ones dogs eat the most of.
Fish is what nutritionists call a novel protein for most dogs: something their immune system has had little practice reacting to. That is why a fish treat is often the one you can still hand over when a dog has a long list of things it cannot have. It is not magic, and a dog can be sensitive to fish too — it is just far less likely, because it has had far fewer chances.
2. Fish skin is mostly collagen, and that is the point
This is the part that gets left out of most fish-treat marketing, and it is the more interesting half of the story.
A cod or salmon skin is roughly 80% collagen by dry weight. Collagen is the structural protein that holds skin, tendon, cartilage, ligament and the gut lining together — the most abundant protein in your dog's body, and the one that becomes harder to replace as the dog gets older.
That is a different claim from "high protein." Collagen has an unusual amino acid profile: very heavy in glycine, proline and hydroxyproline. Those three are exactly what the body draws on to build and repair connective tissue, and they are comparatively scarce in muscle meat. A diet built on chicken breast and kibble can look fine on total protein and still be thin on them.
It is also why our range is built from skin rather than fillet. Cod Skins, Cod Skin Sticks, Cod Twists and Salmon Skins are all skin, which means drying them concentrates the collagen rather than diluting it. A 5 oz bag represents several times that weight in raw skin, and most of what remains is collagen and oil.
The honest limit: a treat is a treat, not a therapeutic dose, and most of the published work on collagen peptides is human rather than canine. We are not selling a joint supplement. What we will say is that if you are handing your dog something between meals anyway, a piece of dried fish skin is a more useful thing to hand over than a biscuit made of flour.
3. Omega-3, and what it is actually for
Skin is also where the fat sits, and in cold-water fish that fat is unusually rich in the long-chain omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA. Dogs convert plant-based omega-3 into these forms very inefficiently, so getting them from a marine source is meaningfully different from getting them from flaxseed.
The effect owners tend to notice first is coat condition — which is why "supports healthy skin and coat" appears on our salmon bags. Collagen and omega-3 are working on the same tissue from two directions, which is a large part of why fish skin does what it does.
Two practical notes. Fish is rich, so introduce it gradually rather than handing over half a bag on day one. And fish treats smell like fish — they are more pungent than a biscuit, and no amount of processing changes that without adding something to mask it, which we will not do.
4. Fish skin is food that usually gets thrown away
When a cod is filleted for human dinner, the fillet leaves and the skin does not. The same is true of salmon. Those skins are perfectly good food — dense in collagen, rich in oil — and in most supply chains they go to waste or to low-value rendering.
Our cod skins, salmon skins, crunch sticks and twists are made from exactly that material. No extra fish is caught to make a bag of treats. It is a by-product turned back into food, which is why the bags say sustainable treats that dogs love and not just sustainable — the sustainability is in what we are using, not a badge we bought.
Which fish treat for which dog
- Cod Wafers — flat and crisp, easy to snap into smaller pieces. The best starting point, and the most useful for training.
- Cod Skins and Skin Sticks — skin, so the highest in collagen. Chewier and longer-lasting, for a dog that inhales anything flat.
- Cod Skin Cubes and Crunch Sticks — small, crunchy, good for pocket-sized rewards.
- Salmon Skins — collagen plus the richest omega-3 of the range. The one to reach for if coat condition is the goal.
- Dried Sardines — a whole fish, bones and all, so the most complete of the lot.
Not every dog is a fish dog. If yours turns its nose up, we also make sweet potato and meat treats — and our guarantee covers you either way.
