Pugzy’s Kitchen.

Pugzy's Kitchen is a home baker catering to our furry four-legged friends. Offering nutritious and tasty treats in pretty packaging, this is a fresh, welcome alternative to the ~~crap~~ unhealthy snacks you get at supermarkets.

Tasteless 'Treats'

It's a little difficult to gauge the objective tastiness of a treat – my dog is not what I would call a connoisseur of fine things and will happily devour almost anything, including his own scabs.

However even Mercutio, eater of scabs, will turn his snout up at the dried 'treats' available at Keells and Cargills. These generally take the form of brightly coloured, mottled sticks or gnarled grayish twiggy things that look like they've fallen off a troll. Unappealing aesthetics aside, these doggy confections appear neither tasty nor, more importantly, healthy.

Pugzy's Kitchen

Enter Pugzy's Kitchen, a home baker for pets (primarily dogs).

Pugzy's provides home-cooked doggy (and sometimes kitty) snacks, suddenly providing me with a service I didn't realise I wanted. The menu is small, but covers both dry and moist treats – liver brownies (Rs. 650 for 250g), chicken jerky (Rs. 1000 for 250g), biscuits (Rs. 700 for 250g), etc. They're amenable to custom orders, and also appear to offer a range of items that aren't on the current menu.

The branding is quite charming and both the packaging and menu are well-designed, and visually pleasing.

We ordered the liver brownies and chicken jerky for Merc, which he gobbled with gusto. As I mentioned before, it's hard to tell with this undiscerning dog, but he seemed quite pleased.

And I was pleased too, especially with the quantity – my total bill for both the brownies and jerky came to Rs. 1250 (if you want delivery, that'll add Rs. 300 to your order), and at a rough guess I'd say that each package contained about 20-25 pieces each. A big dog might perhaps find the liver brownies a bit of a tease – they're quite small – so you may have to give him 3-4 squares at a sitting. But the chicken jerky provides a longer chewing session and a couple should suffice.

Oh You Fancy, Huh?

So why special home made treats over offcuts from the butcher?

True, this may seem the fancier path – liver brownies, anchovies, pupcakes. Bones and gizzards from the supermarket are definitely good options, and probably a bit more cost-effective, but Pugzy's offers treats that look pretty, don't smell terrible, and barely require any effort on your part. There's also someone actively considering aspects of canine nutrition, so you know your pet is being looked after.

I was quite delighted with my experience and love the fact that I have a steady supply of snacks for my dog that don't eat into my own larder or involve boiling chicken necks (yes, I'm a bad person. I don't like sharing food – even with my own dog).