Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Tasty Tuesday 11-13-13

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This is the Tasty Tuesday Blog hop hosted by Kol’s Notes and Sugar the Golden Retriever.

If you’re looking for a delicious or easy recipe to make treats for your dog, you should hop along to the next post, because I’m not sharing a recipe with you today.

What I do want to share with you is a treat I’ve recently discovered that my dogs will jump through hoops for.

It’s grain free.

It’s tasty (yes, they wouldn’t be jumping through hoops for something that didn’t taste good.)

It’s inexpensive.

It’s fairly healthy for them. I say fairly because after I read the ingredients I realized there’s cane sugar in them.  But it’s organic cane sugar. 😉

I found it quite by accident.  I had actually bought them for Hubby and I to snack on, but we didn’t care for this particular brand.

It’s banana chips!

I bought a giant bag at my local warehouse for about $5.99, I’ve been rocking it in my treat bag on off-leash hikes, around the block walks and any time I need a tasty treat.

Not to dis the brand or anything, they just don’t have the flavor that Trader Joe’s has. 🙂

 

They’re easy to carry, easy to break and they don’t make too much of a mess.

Did I mention the dogs love them?

Why yes, I’ll sit for a banana chip. Anything else you’d like me to do?

 

Have you ever discovered a treat your dog loves quite by accident?

Did I mention this is the Tasty Tuesday blog hop?  Hop along and get some great recipes.

My word count is 15,951

REMINDER: THE DEADLINE FOR CALENDAR PHOTO SUBMISSIONS IS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT.


Tasty Tuesday (10-16-12)

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I’m all about the easy when it comes to making treats for my dogs.

When Delilah first joined our pack their nightly snack was a processed rolled treat. Either raw hide or pork hide.

Don’t judge.

Delilah’s a food inhaler. We have to invert her food bowl in order for her meal to last longer than 20 seconds.

You think I’m joking.

I’m not.

When I feed her treats, she rarely if ever chews them, the exception being carrots. For some reason she chews carrots.

She is also a treat hog. The first time I gave her a treat, she swallowed hers and went over and took Sampson’s right out of his mouth.

At the time I wasn’t quite as dog savvy as I am now, so I went right over and took it away and handed it back to Sampson.

Not to be deterred, she walked right back over and took it away again.

I was furious. I marched right over and wrestled it from her and gave it back to Sampson, and then I took her by the collar and marched her chocolate ass to the crate, where she remained while Sampson enjoyed his treat.

We quickly learned that separating them worked best for all parties involved.

This didn’t mean she ate her treat any slower.

More than once, I thought she was going to choke to death trying to swallow a large piece of raw hide.

The final straw was the evening she got a piece stuck in her throat. I sat there horrified, screaming for Hubby and she coughed and gagged.

Delilah lowered her head to the floor and used her front paw to dislodge the raw hide.

That was the last time either one of them got that kind of treat again.

From that point forward I began stuffing Kongs. When that got a bit pricey, I switched to stuffing the white bones and freezing them.

The trick to filling any kind of frozen treat such as a Kong or white bone is to have something thick to seal the end.

Peanut butter is great, but it’s also very high in calorie, if you have two little pork chops like I do, you want to try to keep treats as low-calorie as you can.

Yesterday I was fixing to give Sampson his morning antibiotic. His night-time one is easy, it fits right into his ground meat, but he gets necks in the morning so that won’t work.

I’d been using sunflower butter, but I started thinking, I wonder what would happen if I mixed the sunflower butter with pumpkin?

So I did.

A star is born.

Here’s what you need (note I usually just eye-ball it, so the measurements are approximations.)

¼ cup pumpkin

1 tablespoon nut butter of your choice.

Mix the two together and Viola!

 

Quick and easy, great for filling Kongs or bones and it doubles as something to sneak a little medication in.

Note you can also freeze these in molds or ice-cube trays for refreshing treats in the warmer months.

What would you call this treat? Butterkin? Sunkin? Pumpkin butter?

BTW, I’ve been meaning to ask, do any of you have a contact at Kong? I’ve got an idea I’d like to run by them.



Pumple Shots

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I have a very small kitchen.  I can almost reach from the sink across the kitchen and grab a pan from the stove.

Almost.

Our previous kitchen was HUGE.  I mean HUGE.  It was one of those old-fashion eat in kitchens.  No dining room.  Just a big kitchen.

After five years Hubby and I have adjusted to cooking in a small kitchen.  We can manage it, when it’s just the two of us.

Sometimes I’ve been heard to say, there are too many of us in the kitchen.  Considering we have two decent sized dogs and one small cat that thinks he’s a dog.

I try hard to keep the animals on the fringe of the kitchen.  They can sit right on the edge where they can catch-all the action, they just can’t enter.

What’s she cooking today? Do you think we’ll get some?

 

It’s a daily struggle.

But well worth the effort to save a bit of sanity (not to mention stepped on paws or tails) while working.

Seriously nothing is worse than stepping backward with a full pot of boiling pasta and hearing “MEOWWWWWWWWWWW.”

When all has gone according to plan, I like to reward the participants with a treat.  Sometimes I give them beef hearts or turkey hearts, but some days you want to give them a little something special.

I call these Pumple Shots.

Here’s what you’ll need:

A half and half mixture of canned pumpkin (if you’re industrious and like to make your own pumpkin good for you!) and unsweetened applesauce

a small muffin tin, or something similar

What a cute little tray. (Notice the lab inspector in the bottom right of the shot. She was there to assure nothing tainted went into any of her treats. It’s important to have a good quality control inspector.)

 

Mix the pumpkin and the applesauce together, if your freezing container is bigger than mine, feel free to layer instead of mixing.  It matters not.

Fill the container with the Pumple mix and freeze.

That’s gonna make some crazy lab pretty woofing happy,

I got these cute little forms at the Animal Rescue site.

The depth of this mold surprised me, when I pulled the treat out they were HUGE.

My hand is on the small side, but these were big treats!

 

It mattered not.  Delilah had hers in her mouth BEFORE I could snap the picture.   But I would say they both enjoyed them.

I’m not sure about this mom, give me a minute to figure it out.

 

 

The remaining treats went on a plate, which I covered with foil and stuck back in the freezer.

 

 

 

 

I mixed these up last night and froze them overnight and it was perfect.

The mold I used was made out of silicone so the treats just popped right out, but it you are using a tin mold, you might want to add just a touch of non-stick spray.

Do your pups like frozen treats?  What kinds of frozen treats do you make?

Do you feel like hopping today?

This is the Tasty Tuesday blog hop, hosted by Kol’s Notes and Sugar, the Golden Retriever.


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