Some Easy Recipes to Make For Your Dog

Last week we wrote about people food your dog can eat; thanks for making it our most viewed and shared blog post yet! This week I thought we would take it a step further and talk about two recipes for snacks and treats you can make for your dog!

I’m going to be mainly focusing on treats and snacks, but if you want to make your dog’s food from scratch, you certainly can. A veterinary nutritionist will be happy to help you determine your dog’s exact needs and come up with a recipe. A dog eating a home-made meal should also get a daily supplement. We love NuVet, which we carry here at Delightful Dog. Several of our staff members use it for their own dogs too.

What got me thinking about this was the sulfite-free dried mango. It’s actually pretty hard to find. Sulfites are a type of salt that preserve dried fruit. Fortunately, dried mango is super easy to make and will make your house smell like a tropical vacation.  You can follow the same steps for any fruit or veggie you want to dry. 

1. Preheat the oven to 175, or whatever the lowest setting your oven has. Anything under 200 will work fine. 

2. Slice your fruit about ¼ inch thick (Noticing a trend? Preheat the oven to "about" this temperature; slice the fruit "about" this thick? The good news is, dogs aren’t exactly food critics. They’re going to like whatever you make for them, so experiment and have fun! These are just some guidelines)

3. If you have a roasting pan with vents in the bottom, that’s ideal for drying fruit. Arrange your fruit so it’s close together but not quite touching. No roasting pan? No problem! You can also use a cookie sheet. Crinkle up some foil then partially smooth it out and use this on top of the cookie sheet. If you put your mango on a totally flat surface, it will stick, and air being able to get under it will make it dry quicker. So you just want some ridges in your foil.

4. Put the mango in the oven. It will take about 3 hours, then need turning over, then about 2 more hours on the other side. If you feel like it’s starting to cook instead of dehydrating, you can keep the oven door cracked.Different ovens dry at different speeds; I recommend checking it hourly. When it’s done, it will feel leathery.

You can dry lots of things: sweet potatoes, bananas, berries, or pumpkin.

The second recipe is for more of a traditional biscuit type treat.

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour (If your dog is sensitive to wheat, oat flour is even better!)

1/3 cup peanut butter

1 large egg

3/4 cup low sodium chicken broth (you don’t have to use chicken broth! The purpose of this ingredient is to add moisture and flavor. If you boil some veggies or pasta for your human family to eat, you can save the water and use it here. I especially recommend carrot-water)

3 tablespoons oil - the very best is virgin coconut oil, but olive is great for dogs too

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. Combine peanut butter, egg, broth and oil in a separate bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour and stir with a spoon or rubber spatula until a rough dough forms. Knead the dough in the bowl 5-6 times until it comes together.

3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and roll to a 1/4-inch thickness. With a 3-inch dog bone shaped cookie cutter, cut out treats and transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Press all the scraps together, kneading once or twice, then roll out to 1/4-inch thickness and cut out more treats; repeat if necessary. (Note: I’m a super lazy chef and Scooter is easy to please; don’t worry too much about the shape of the treats. Your dog will like blob-shapes just as much as bone-shapes)

4. Bake treats until lightly browned, about 30-35 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely; biscuits will harden as they cool. Store in an airtight container. They last a week or so at room temperature and 2 - 3 weeks in the fridge.

There are some good opportunities to get creative here; I like to add a mashed carrot or mashed banana. You can add a bunch of chopped parsley to help with stinky breath.

For additional recipes, Pinterest is a wealth of information. My only words of caution are to avoid sugar and salt as much as possible, and when you can limit wheat.

Of course the easiest recipe of all is buying treats that somebody else made! We carry an assortment of healthy treats here at Delightful Dog, and our friends over at Dog City Bakery make healthy bakery-style treats in house and we highly recommend them.