Why a chew should be boring

Every other chew on the shelf is a recipe. Ours is a subtraction: milk, salt, lime, ten weeks of cold air. If you read the back of the sleeve there is nothing to read.

That is not modesty, it is engineering. A binder softens a chew, and a soft chew is gone in an afternoon. Flavouring makes a dog gulp rather than gnaw. Both are there to help the product sell, not to help the dog.

A chew that needs a flavour is a chew that failed at being food.

What hardness actually does

Dried yak cheese does not shatter. It abrades: a determined chewer takes a millimetre a day off the end, which is the point. Wear is safe; splintering is not, and it is the reason we will not make an antler or a hoof.

The trade-off is patience. A bar takes ten weeks on the racks and loses 60 % of its weight before it is worth selling, and we cannot rush that with heat without turning the surface to rubber.

The one flourish we allow

When the bar is worn to a stub, forty seconds in the microwave puffs it into something crisp and slightly ridiculous. It is the only interesting thing the product does, and the dog gets to keep the ending.