During Sunday’s post when I wrote about the dog’s diet, I mentioned I would share about their night-time treats.

Every night around 9 PM I make myself a snack, it seemed only fair since I was eating, that the dogs should get a treat too.

Delilah took to 9 PM treat time, like a Labrador takes to food, (or large bodies of water.) Needless to say, it’s not possible for you to forget snack time.

Over the years the treats have evolved.  What started out as raw hide, changed to twisted pork hide and after watching in horror as Delilah lodged a large piece of pork hide in her mouth, I decided we needed to find a kinder treat.

Since we were trying to help the dogs lose weight, I switched to a lower calorie treat.  On occasion I will stuff a Kong with pineapple and yogurt, but lately my go to treat has been the stuffed white bones.

Once upon a time these bones were stuffed with processed cheese or peanut butter.

Now they are washed out every morning and I frost one end with pumpkin and stick it in the freezer.  When I get home from work, I fill the rest of the bone and freeze it until snack time.

Most nights the bones are filled with either applesauce or yogurt, but as I mentioned in my Sunday post the place where we buy our raw food has a nutritionist, she prefers something called Kefir. (Sounds like reefer.)

This is like a pre-made smoothy.  It’s filled with probiotics and all of the healthy nutrients that come in yogurt, it’s a low fat, low calorie treat that you can feel good about giving to your dog.

Of course, you can always make yourself a treat as well.

I love things that I can make that I can also share with my dogs, is there any particular food that you make that you share with your furry ones?

This is the Tasty Tuesday Blog Hop,

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.

 

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?

 

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.

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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.