Dog biscuit facts for kids
A dog biscuit is a hard biscuit-based dietary supplement for dogs or other canines, similar to human snack food.
Dog biscuits tend to be hard and dry. Dog biscuits may be sold in a flat bone-shape. The dry and hard biscuit texture helps clean the dog's teeth, promoting oral health.
History
"Dog's bread", made from bran, has been mentioned since at least Roman times. It was already criticized (as in later centuries) as particularly bad bread; Juvenal refers to dog's bread as "filth" - "And bit into the filth of a dog's bread" Et farris sordes mordere Canini.
In Spain, "pan de perro" is mentioned as early as 1623 in a play by Lope de Vega. It is used here in the sense of giving someone blows; to "give dog's bread" to someone could mean anything from mistreating them to killing them. The latter meaning refers to a special bread (also called zarazas) made with ground glass, poison and needles and intended to kill dogs.
The bread meant as food for dogs was also called parruna and was made from bran. This was very likely what was referred to in associating the bread with (non-fatal) mistreatment.
The English dog biscuit appears to be a nineteenth-century innovation: "With this may be joined farinaceous and vegetable articles — oat-meal, fine-pollard, dog-biscuit, potatoes, carrots, parsnips" (1827); "being in the neighbourhood of Maidenhead, I inspected Mr. Smith's dog-biscuit manufactory, and was surprised to find he has been for a long period manufacturing the enormous quantity of five tons a-week !" (1828)
In later years, dog biscuits began to be made of meat products and were sometimes treated as synonymous with dog food. In 1871, an ad appeared in Cassell's Illustrated Almanac for "SLATER'S MEAT BISCUIT FOR DOGS - Contains vegetable substances and about 25 per cent of Prepared Meat. It gives Dogs endurance, and without any other food will keep them in fine working condition."
Spratt's Dog Biscuits
By most accounts, the history of the industry begins with a man named James Spratt, who was an electrician from Cincinnati. Spratt had patented a new type of lightning conductor in 1850 and traveled to England to sell it. In London, according to industry lore, he saw a group of dogs eating discarded hardtack, the cheap, tough biscuits carried on ships and known to sailors as "molar breakers."
In 1860, still in England, Spratt unveiled Spratt's Patent Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes, a combination of wheat, beetroot, vegetables, and beef blood.
Spratt dominated the American market until 1907, when F. H. Bennett, whose own dog biscuits were faring poorly against those of the larger company, had the idea of making them in the shape of a bone. "His 'Maltoid Milk-Bones' were such a success that for the next fifteen years Bennett's Milk-Bone dominated the commercial dog food market in America." In 1931, the National Biscuit Company, now known as Nabisco, bought the company.
World's Largest Dog Biscuit
The world's largest dog biscuit weighs 279.87 kg and was baked to be 2,000 larger than average by Hampshire Pet Products from Joplin, Missouri, USA.
Images for kids
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1867 advertisement for Spratts dog food
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1876 advertisement for Spratt's Patent Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes
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Dog waiting for Milk Bone treat
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Maltoid milk-bone treat
