Honest Review: What Blue Buffalo Bits Do Well and Where They Fall Short

I will start with the part that surprised me. When I picked up a bag of Blue Buffalo Bits for Maisie, I expected to like them. Blue Buffalo has a reputation for using better ingredients, and Maisie is the kind of dog who will do almost anything for a single bite of something chicken-flavored. What I did not expect was how much I would end up thinking about portion size, bag design, and the difference between a treat that works for training and a treat that works for everything else.

This is the honest version of that story. Not the product page version, not the version where every dog loves every treat and every bag disappears without a problem. The version where I tell you what Blue Buffalo Bits do well, where they fall short, and exactly who should spend their money on them.

How I've Used Them

Maisie is a five-year-old beagle mix, about 26 pounds, and she is the most food-motivated dog I have ever lived with. She also has a sensitive stomach, so I read ingredient lists the way other people read the news. I have been using Blue Buffalo Bits for about six weeks now, mostly in short kitchen training sessions and during our evening walks.

Our routine looks like this. Morning walk, same loop around the neighborhood, about 25 minutes door to door. Backyard fetch while I drink my coffee. Then, after dinner, ten minutes of sit, stay, and come in the kitchen. That is where the Bits earn their keep. They are small enough that I can give Maisie one for a correct sit and another for a clean stay without blowing through her daily calories. When we are on a walk, I keep a handful in my jacket pocket and use them to keep her attention when a squirrel crosses the street. There is one particular corner near the old elementary school where she used to pull hard, and after three weeks of rewarding her for checking in with me instead, she walks past it without a second look.

The texture matters more than I expected. Blue Buffalo Bits are soft enough to break in half without crumbling, which means I can stretch a single treat into two or three rewards during a longer session. They are not mushy and they do not leave residue on my fingers the way some soft treats do. That sounds like a small thing, but when you are doing ten minutes of training every night, it adds up. One Tuesday in the second week, I counted out 20 Bits for the evening session, the same number I had used every night since we started. Halfway through, Maisie offered a sit before I even gave the cue, then held a stay while I walked to the far end of the kitchen and back. It was the first time she had done either without a prompt. I am not going to credit the treat for all of it, but having the same small, soft reward every single night made the routine click for her. A 4-ounce bag lasts us about two and a half weeks, longer than I expected, because I break each Bit in half for the easy commands and save whole ones for the hard ones.

What Blue Buffalo Bits Do Well

The first thing I noticed is the ingredient list. The first ingredient is deboned chicken, which is exactly what I want to see in a training treat. There are no by-products, no corn, no wheat, and no soy. For a dog like Maisie, who has a stomach that objects to mystery ingredients, that is a real advantage. We have not had a single upset stomach since we started using them.

The second thing is the size. Each Bit is about the size of a pea, maybe a little larger, and I measured one against a dime once just to be sure I was not imagining it. It is slightly smaller than the dime. That is the right size for a training treat. Maisie can eat it in one bite without pausing to chew, which means we can keep the training session moving. When a treat is too big, the dog spends more time chewing and less time paying attention. These are the opposite of that. The smell is worth a mention too. Some chicken treats smell like they were made in a lab. These smell like actual chicken, mild and not greasy. That matters when I keep a handful in my jacket pocket on a cold morning walk, because the last thing I want is an oily film on my fingers while I am trying to manage the leash. These do not leave that film, so I can reward Maisie mid-walk without stopping to wipe my hands.

The third thing is the chicken flavor. I am not going to pretend I have tasted one, but I can tell you what Maisie thinks. She does the little head tilt when I pull the bag out of the pantry. She sits before I even ask her to. For a dog who is already food-motivated, these treats are about as high-value as they come. That makes them useful for the moments when you need your dog's full attention, like a busy sidewalk or a training class. We had a moment like that last month when a delivery truck backfired on our street and Maisie tensed up. I held out a Bit, she looked at me, and the whole thing passed in about five seconds. A less interesting treat would not have pulled her attention back that fast.

Blue Buffalo also makes these Bits in a few different recipes, so if chicken is not the flavor your dog prefers, there are other options. I have only tried the chicken version, because that is what Maisie likes, but I appreciate that the line is not a one-flavor deal.

Where They Fall Short

Now the part that nobody puts on the product page. The bag is a problem. It is a standard stand-up pouch with a zipper top, and the zipper is not great. After about a week, the zipper started to catch and skip. The breaking point came on a Thursday. I had sealed the bag the night before, or thought I had, and when I reached in the next afternoon the Bits at the top had gone from soft to slightly stiff. Not stale exactly, but not right. That was the second time it happened, so I moved the whole bag into a glass jar with a clamp lid. The jar works, but it is one more thing to wash and one more step between me and the treat bag, and on a tired evening that step is exactly the kind of friction that makes me skip training altogether.

The second issue is portion control, and this one is on me as much as it is on the product. The feeding guide on the bag is written for treats as a supplement, not as a training tool. If you are doing a ten-minute training session every night, it is very easy to give your dog more than the recommended amount. Maisie is 26 pounds, and the bag suggests a modest number of Bits per day for a dog her size. I hit that number before dinner training even started, because a session with sit, down, stay, and come can easily use 15 to 20 pieces. So I started subtracting about a quarter cup of her dinner kibble to balance it out. Her weight has stayed at 26 pounds across the six weeks, and that is the number I watch. The bag does not do that work for you.

That is not a flaw in the treat itself. It is a flaw in how we think about training treats in general. But it is worth saying out loud because the bag does not say it. These are not free calories. They count toward your dog's daily intake, and if you are not tracking them, you will end up with a heavier dog and a lighter wallet.

The third thing is the price. Blue Buffalo Bits are more expensive than a lot of other training treats on the shelf. You are paying for the ingredient quality, and I think that is fair, but it is still a real consideration for a household that goes through a bag every couple of weeks. There are cheaper options that work fine. They just do not have the same ingredient list. For me, the tradeoff is worth it because Maisie's stomach is the one thing I do not want to gamble on. For someone whose dog can eat anything, the cheaper bag makes more sense.

These are not free calories. They count toward your dog's daily intake, and if you are not tracking them, you will end up with a heavier dog and a lighter wallet.

The Ingredient Question

I want to spend a little more time on ingredients because that is the main reason someone chooses Blue Buffalo over a cheaper brand. The Bits are made with deboned chicken as the first ingredient, and they include flaxseed, which is a decent source of omega fatty acids. There are also added vitamins and minerals, which is nice but not something I weigh heavily when choosing a treat. The main meal is where nutrition happens. A treat is a treat.

What matters more to me is what is not in the bag. No chicken by-product meal, no corn, no wheat, no soy, no artificial preservatives. For a dog with a sensitive stomach, that is the difference between a treat that works and a treat that causes problems. The first day, I gave Maisie three Bits as a test and then watched her like a hawk for the rest of the afternoon. Nothing. No scratching at her mouth, no upset stomach, no change in her energy. Six weeks later, we have not had a single digestive issue, and that is the strongest endorsement I can give any treat.

That said, I do not think Blue Buffalo Bits are magic. They are chicken treats with a clean ingredient list. There are other brands doing the same thing, and some of them cost less. What Blue Buffalo offers is consistency and a name you can trust. Whether that is worth the extra money is a decision every dog owner has to make for themselves.

How They Compare to the Alternatives I Tried

Before I settled on Blue Buffalo Bits, I tried a few other training treats with Maisie. The cheapest option was a generic store brand that came in a big tub. Maisie ate them, but the ingredient list was mostly filler, and she did not seem as excited about them. The texture was also drier, which made them harder to break into small pieces during training. The tub did not even list calories per piece, so I had no way to track what she was getting. With Blue Buffalo Bits, the calorie count is right on the back of the bag. That should not be rare, but it is.

I also tried a popular brand that makes tiny, crunchy treats. I wanted it to work because it was cheaper and came in a bigger bag. But on the third evening, Maisie spat one out onto the kitchen floor. She never does that. She sniffed it, licked it, and walked away. I tried breaking it into smaller pieces, thinking maybe the size was the problem, but she still turned her nose up. That is when I realized the flavor was the issue, not the size. And even on the nights she did eat them, they were so small that I had to give her three or four at a time to make it worth her while. That defeated the purpose of a low-calorie treat because I was just giving her more of them.

Blue Buffalo Bits sit in a middle spot that I have come to appreciate. They are small enough to use one at a time, soft enough to break in half, and flavorful enough that Maisie actually works for them. That combination is harder to find than you would think.

Who This Is For

Blue Buffalo Bits are for the dog owner who cares about what goes into their dog's treats and is willing to pay a little more for a cleaner ingredient list. They are also for anyone who does regular training sessions and needs a treat that is small, soft, and easy to break into pieces. If you have a food-motivated dog like Maisie, these will probably become a staple in your training kit. If your dog is a picky eater, the chicken flavor is strong enough to earn a try, but I would buy the smallest bag first to test it before you commit to a bigger one.

Who Should Skip It

If you have a dog that is not particularly motivated by food, these treats will not change that. If you are on a tight budget and go through treats quickly, the price per bag might be hard to justify. And if you are someone who does not want to think about portion control, these treats make it easy to overfeed without realizing it. None of that makes Blue Buffalo Bits a bad product. It just means they are not for everyone.