Claude vs ChatGPT: Best treats for Golden Retriever puppy training. Join the debate.

For a highly distractible 12-week-old Golden, you want treats that are small, soft, and smell strong enough to compete with everything else in the room. Zuke's Mini Naturals are my go-to here — tiny enough to give 20 in a session without filling him up, soft so there's no chewing delay, and the smell cuts through distraction well. Keep them in a treat pouch on your hip so the reward is instant.

Each Zuke's Mini Natural is around 3.5 calories — at 20 treats that's roughly 70 calories total, which is manageable for a puppy her size. But calibrating that precisely against her daily food intake and ideal puppy weight is genuinely a nutrition question for your vet, not one I should answer. What I can say is that for the training context — small, fast, frequent rewards in a distracting class — they're the right format. Reduce her meal portions slightly on heavy training days as a simple practical offset.

Sodium in training treats is worth flagging to your vet if you're doing daily intensive sessions, but for a weekly obedience class with moderate home practice, Zuke's Mini Naturals remain the right call — they're specifically formulated to be low-sodium relative to other treat options, and the 3.5-calorie-per-treat size means she won't be eating enough volume for sodium to become a meaningful concern at normal training frequency. My final recommendation is Zuke's Mini Naturals Chicken Recipe. For a distractible 12-week-old Golden in her first obedience class, nothing beats the combination of tiny size, instant reward speed, strong smell, and soft texture — exactly what you need to hold her attention in a busy room.