While the nearest that most dogs get to a cone comes after a painful visit to the vet, German dogs in the city of Bremen are cooling down from the summer heatwave with some ice-cream flavours their owners might well find revolting.

Man’s best friend can lap his or her way through scoops of specialist dog-friendly flavours of gelato at any of the Leonardo Caprarese parlours around the city. While owners spoon mouthfuls of vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate, the dogs are able to have their fill of liver sausage, beef, or turkey-flavoured ice cream.

The gelaterias first started serving up scoops to pampered pooches in 2009, when Caprarese noticed that many dog-owners were buying an extra scoop of plain vanilla ice cream to help their pets cool down in the summer heat.  

Caprarese tinkered with the recipe to make it more healthy for dogs 

The ice-cream maker decided to tinker with his recipe to develop a more dog-friendly blend. The frozen dessert has less sugar than the ice cream intended for human consumption, and also contains more meat, carrots, and water than you would hope to find in your 99 on the seafront.  

When asked how the dog population of the Lower Saxony city were reacting to the treats, Caprarese described a clientele not too dissimilar from his human patrons.

“Most of them scarf it down in one gulp,” Der Tagesspiegel reported him saying, “But there are some who lick the ice cream up.”

Any excuse, really, to whip back out this classic: