Food Friday: Home Cooking?

I am looking into the possibility of cooking fresh food for my dogs, in addition to their regular dog food. It's not impossible to make your own dog food, but being a DIY dog chef is all about balance. You need the right balance of fresh food to pre-made food. The right balance of calcium and phosphorus. The right balance of protein and fat and carbohydrates. The right amount of fiber. Here's what I've learned so far.

It's Not That Hard

Not a balanced diet!

The dietary needs of dogs are not ridiculously complex. You don't have to be a veterinary nutritionist with a research lab in order to make nutritious healthy food for you pet. Every meal does not need to be "complete an balanced". Variety is the most important thing to consider, you don't want to make just one recipe and feed that to your dog every single day forever. Different proteins, different vegetables, different carbohydrate sources, the more variety the better!

I've learned that you can replace 10% of your dog's food with fresh stuff and the nutrition in their commercial dog food will provide all the balance they need. With that in mind, I cheerfully add yogurt, canned pumpkin, sardines, and leftover meats to my dogs' food on a regular basis.

It's Not That Easy, Either

When you start replacing more than 10% of your dog's meal with homemade food, it's time to start worrying about balance. I cringe when I "easy dog food recipes" that basically consist of a small amount of chicken, a lot of rice, some veggies, and nothing else. Where's the calcium?! Too many good intentions and not enough science can result in a dog with nutritional deficiencies. Many, many dog food recipes found online have major deficits. A lot of them aren't even specific enough! I already know a recipe is bad news if it calls for "1 pound of ground beef" without ever specifying whether that weight is for raw or cooked meat.

To this end, I've joined a homemade dog food Facebook group that focuses on analyzing recipes with tools like the Nutrition Data site. Outside scrutiny is really your best insurance against making mistakes, and having crowd-sourced data certainly beats doing all the research on your own. I haven't finished my research or started developing my own recipes yet, but I can share the principles I'm working by.

Homemade Dog Food Guidelines

• As much variety in ingredients as possible. Different meats, different veggies, different grains.
• Consider your budget. Don't let anyone tell you that everything needs to be organic, that's mostly a marketing term and there's no difference in nutritional quality. Organic produce is still grown with pesticides, sometimes with a lot more and stronger chemicals than conventional produce, as long as the pesticide is on the list of approved organic pesticides. Buy the cheap stuff and don't feel guilty about it.
• Get help. Find a large and contentious group of people that cook for their dogs, observe them arguing with one another, and learn everything you can. Some dietary supplements come in different forms that are better or worse for certain health conditions. 

Paw5 Enriched Life Challenge Day 1: Playdate!

Paw5's Enriched Life Challenge has begun! We are kicking things off with a playdate and some fun DIY projects. I built some wall shelves for the cats, and we visited some friends for tea and tennis balls. None of these projects was elaborate or time-consuming, but all of them added some major value to everyone's day. Here's what we did:

Playdate!

Ru the chihuahua doesn't get to go with me to as many classes or events as Godzilla and Zip, so a playdate with friends provides him with some much-needed social enrichment. We went to visit my human friend Kim, her dogs Penny and Ernie, and her cats Freya, Hoshi, Martian, Chulla, and Pluto. Kim lives at the top of a mountain, and the chance to run through the woods provides an enormous amount of sensory and environmental enrichment. Ernie, Godzilla, and Zip spent our visit racing wildly after tennis balls, while Ru hung out with Penny and visited with the kitties.

There is so much for the dogs to do at Kim's house! They love to search through the woods for forgotten tennis balls, and splash around in the pond. Since there are no busy roads up there, and the dogs all stick close to me, they get a whole lot of freedom to play and explore. We did a little bit of property maintenance while we were out, and even ran into some neighbors and their three dogs! Kim sent us home with some nice fresh catnip for the Hellions, along with some freshly-picked limes and persimmons. I got some catnip seeds too, so hopefully I can grow my own!

Cat Shelves

Paw5's Enriched Life Challenge is all about making your dog's life even better, but I wanted to include my cats too. Indoor life can get pretty boring, and cats most definitely benefit from enrichment! James and Solstice have had their share of dried catnip before, but today I'm providing them with some sensory enrichment in the form of freshly-picked catnip. This was a totally new experience for all of us, and I was hoping they'd get a bit silly with it. I was slightly disappointed when they both gobbled it down like every other plant they'd ever encountered.

For environmental enrichment, I installed some wall shelves for the Hellions. These provide them with some much-needed vertical space for climbing, jumping, and just hanging out. They have a litterbox station on one side of the room, and a feeding station on a windowsill on the other side. The shelves now link the two areas and allow them to travel from one to the other without ever touching the ground.

The shelves are attached to the walls via various brackets. The smaller ones are mounted with drywall anchors, the largest is screwed directly into the wall studs. I cut up a rubber-backed non-skid rug and used a staple gun to attach it to the shelves for traction. I hung a total of four shelves, and the entire project took less than an hour. My shelves are sort of a hodgepodge of things we had in the garage, but decorative brackets are easy to find and shelves can be purchased or painted to match any decor. 

Enrichment 

On Day 1 of Paw5's Enriched Life Challenge, my dogs had a wonderful outing and playdate that provided all three with social, environmental, and sensory enrichment. My cats got a new sensory experience nibbling/devouring some fresh catnip for the first time. They also got a big new environmental source of enrichment from their new wall shelves. We didn't quite follow any of Paw5's daily plans, but I think we're getting into the spirit of the challenge anyway!

How are you providing enrichment for your pets this week?

Turn Your Leash Into an Instant No-Pull Device, Free!

Your regular, ordinary dog leash can be used as a miraculous no-pull device. Seriously. There's a very simple trick called "the leash wrap" that can change your life. It's easy to put on and take off, and all you need is your dog's regular collar and leash. This is a particularly useful trick because you can employ it as needed, and then go back to regular walking.

Photo by Erin Koski

Ready? Here's the trick: Wrap the leash around your dog's chest or waist, leaving the snap attached to the collar, and passing the handle end under the snap end. Done.

When your dog pulls, they will now tighten the leash around their own body. When they stop pulling, the pressure lets up instantly. If your dog is wearing a martingale collar, you can even pass the handle end of the leash through the martingale loop to hold everything in place a little better.

There are a lot of commercial products that basically use this little trick. The Instant Trainer leash and the Monster Walker both use exactly this, with the leash positioned behind the ribcage. The Harness Lead positions the leash further up, behind the front legs.

I used to use this on a lot of my daycare dogs at pick up time, when they were over-the-top excited to see their humans and often forgot their manners. It's ideal for handling short bursts of excitement, like walking from the car to the dog park, or the very beginning of a walk. Be aware that the leash usually wraps around the dog's sensitive abdomen, so it can be surprising and possibly even a little bit painful the first time they hit the end of the leash. Try it out when they aren't bouncing off the walls first, so they understand the concept.

Of course, like all anti-pull gadgets, your dog can eventually get used to the leash wrap if you let him. It works best for dogs that already know how to walk on a loose leash at least part of the time. For a chronic puller, the leash wraps presents an opportunity to reward him for walking nicely before he gets used to the feeling and starts to ignore it.

What's your favorite solution for dogs that pull on walks?

What's Inside a Flexi Leash?

My good old 2006 Flexi Comfort retractable leash died recently. It stopped retracting at a speedy eye-injuring pace and began leisurely rolling itself back in with the occasional pause. Ten years of solid service isn't too bad, though today's Flexis come with a lifetime warranty. The responsible, adult thing to do would be to toss the tired, worn out leash and buy a new one. Obviously that's not what I did.

Flexi Leash Safety

Years of Flexi propaganda had me convinced that within the case there lurked a Death Spring that could fly out and kill me and everyone I loved. Flexi leashes come with a lot of warnings, but I mostly stick with the more visible belt or tape ones, and only use them in places where my dog can safely be 15' away from me, so I like to think I'm safe from traumatic finger amputations and nasty cord burns. As long as the Death Spring Containment Case wasn't opened, we were all safe.

Then my Flexi leash stopped retracting and I threw caution to the wind, by which I mean I googled "flexi leash repair" and looked at pictures of other people taking them apart to bolster my confidence. Apparently the case could be cracked open without immediately unleashing the Death Spring.

Tool Time

After removing the two screws holding the case together, I carefully pried the thing open with a screwdriver. No Death Spring in sight. Inside, there was a white plastic wheel holding the length of the leash, the brake and lock, and that was it.

I had hoped that an obvious and fixable problem would immediately become apparent when I opened the case. Maybe there was a twist in the leash, or something needing lubrication, something other than "spring's fucked, buy a new leash".

The Secrets Within

The leash remained functional with the case opened, so I was able to see the mechanisms and the action. I pulled out the tape and let it retract, during the pauses there was still something moving inside the wheel. Maybe the Death Spring was slipping?

Clearly the next step was to remove the white wheel. I had always envisioned the Death Spring as a huge coil, and I assumed it must be held between the wheel and the other side of the case.

Convinced that the green peg in the center was all that contained the Death Spring, I trapped the leash in a vise while I pried the wheel loose. To my great disappointment, there was no great burst of primal energy, and the other side of the wheel looked pretty much the same. There was still no obvious reason why the leash wouldn't retract smoothly.

In the hole in the center of the ring though, I could now see a strip of metal with a big kink in the end.

The inner part of the white wheel was clearly a separate part that could be removed. This must be the lair of the Death Spring. By this point though, I was pretty sure that nothing was going to pop out at me. This spring probably wasn't even tightly wound anymore. 

I could spin the end of the metal strip around with a screwdriver, coiling it tighter until it popped back to its original position.

It looked similarly nonthreatening with the cover removed. Just a piece of wound up metal. It's difficult to tell from the picture, but this is a very long strip of very thin metal. The coils together looked a lot like a solid cylinder of solid silver material.

With the cover off, I again spun the end of the strip around with a screwdriver and...

HOLY SHIT! It exploded out of the wheel in a huge jumble of twisted metal!

Death Spring Located!

I had been playing with the very end of this huge spring without realizing that the wheel around it was holding it in tension. As soon as I pulled it a tiny bit sideways, the whole thing shot out.

See that straight bit at the bottom? That part has lost its tension entirely. It's likely the reason why the leash would reel in very slowly at certain points. While it's possible to re-tension a spring by hitting it with a hammer (I do this with clarinet springs), I don't think I'm up to the task of re-tensioning this monster. Even if I could get it contained again. Yikes!

So yes, the spring's fucked and I need to get a new Flexi leash. I'm saving this one for parts, though. I'm thinking we need a pink Flexi Vario with interchangeable end pieces that stretch or light up. Plus there's various attachment for the handle, like a cargo box and a flashlight. So many option! Flexis made after September 2011 have a lifetime warranty, so it could be the last one I ever buy. This green one is the only retractable leash I purchased new, all my others are thrift store finds because I walk on the wild side and use potentially unsafe equipment. 

Thanks for joining me on this journey of discovery!

DIY Training Treat Trail Mix

When Brisbane was younger, I used to buy him something called "beef trail mix". It was a sizable canister of various bits of jerky, freeze dried lung and liver, and I don't even know what all else. There were all sorts of sizes and textures and flavors, all in just the right size for training treats. I loved it because some of the bits were higher value than others, and I was grabbing them at random to Briz was never quite sure what he was going to get.

Ziwi Peak dried meat dog food, Fruitables Bacon Whole Jerky,
Loving Pets Buffalo Lung, and cheese.

I was pretty devastated when the product was discontinued a couple of months after I discovered it. Still, the idea was brilliant. I love using a variety of training treats in one bag. The uncertainty makes the whole game more exciting for the dog. Karen Pryor likens it to the difference between a soda machine and a slot machine, there's a reason people get addicted to gambling and not Coca-Cola machines.

Trail mix is also an awesome way to stretch those high-value treats by sneaking in some lower-value stuff as well. Most of my crew find kibble to be pretty boring anywhere more exciting than home, but will happily accept a piece now and then while working for better stuff. Everyone except for Ranger, who will only accept freeze dried liver and spits out every lesser offering.

Preparing to chop dried lung, cheese, and bacon jerky.

There are some important considerations when putting together a random bunch of dog treats, and storage is important unless you will be using it all up in one training session.

Rule 1: Never mix freeze dried liver with anything moist. Whether it's ground beef, hot dog bits, or boiled chicken, don't do it. Wet freeze dried liver tends to fall apart when it rehydrates, and the result is pretty vile.

Rule 2: The refrigerator is your friend. If anything in your mix is perishable, keep the whole bag in the fridge between training sessions.

All chopped and ready to mix.

Rule 3: Keep it airtight. Soft treats like Zukes Minis and Ziwi Peak food tend to get hard and stale if you let them hang out in a treat bag for very long. According to my dogs, this makes them significantly less awesome.

For this week's agility class, I made a bag of trail mix based on dried buffalo lung, which is super smelly and therefore very high value. I'm not sure if it rivals freeze dried liver though, I haven't asked Ranger yet. Some Ziwi Peak dried meat dog food went in, as well as some bacon Fruitables Whole Jerky, a little bit of Acana Singles lamb kibble, and a couple sticks of cheddar jack cheese. This was enough treats for a couple of trick training sessions and Sisci's entire agility class, which usually involves continuous reinforcement for allowing obese labradors, spooky show border collies, and hordes of baseball kids to exist in our vicinity. (I have no idea why Sisci is terrified of conformation border collies, she also finds baby dolls and stuffed horses similarly horrifying).

Trail mix!

Trail Mix Ingredients

• Meat (chicken, steak, pork, ground beef, hot dogs, cooked liver, bacon)
• Dog Food (kibble, air dried, freeze dried)
• Commercial Dog Treats (whatever your dog will work for)
• Cheese
• Cereal, crackers, and other people food
• Veggies (higher value when swimming in a bag of meaty treats, but my dogs won't work for them)
• Fruit (banana chips, apple slices, dried apricots, anything that will hold together)

DIY Dog Crate Bumpers

Know what fits really well in 36" dog crates? Crib bedding. I have a variety of baby and toddler quilts that make fantastic crate bedding, they are very easy to wash and dry, and and can be layered for plenty of padding. Baby bedding is super easy to find at thrift shops and garage sales, and I don't think I've paid more than $3 for any of mine.

So cozy!

I recently found a totally adorable Pottery Barn dinosaur quilt that came with a matching crib
bumper. I had thought I would have to modify it a bit to use in a dog crate, but it had enough ties to secure it nicely in Brisbane's lair. I tied it in place all around the sides and just used scissors to chop off the excess and now Briz has the most adorable dinosaur-themed crate ever. I could probably finish the raw edge on my sewing machine, but for now it looks fine.

Crib bumpers are super easy to find used, most thrift stores seem to have at least three or four for sale. Though they are included with many crib bedding sets, a lot of parents dump them immediately. The American Academy of Pediatrics specifically states that bumper pads should not be used due to the risks of strangulation, entrapment, and suffocation they pose to human infants. Fortunately, dogs are a lot more capable of human infants.

I would not use a bumper pad in a crate for a dog that has separation anxiety or a tendency to eat non-food items. In general, I would rather be safe than sorry, so I would not use a bumper with a new dog, recent rescue, or puppy. However, for an adult dog that enjoys their crate, crib pads can be a nice cozy addition. We just moved last weekend, and Brisbane had been very unsettled. Even though he had the same crate with the same bed and the same blanket, it didn't feel like home. After I added the dinosaur bumper pad, he went right in and fell asleep immediately. I'm not sure what it is about the pad that makes him feel secure, but he definitely loves it.

DIY Dog: Homemade Bone Broth for Picky Dogs

Homemade bone broth is incredibly easy to make, and one of the few things my picky chihuahua will reliably drink. Ru is super, super picky. In an attempt to get more liquid into him, I have tried moistening his food with a variety of different things. He normally doesn't like anything at all touching his kibble, and won't eat it if there's water, baby food, applesauce, or store-bought broth or stock on it.

I started making my own broth while reading Dinner Pawsible. While I didn't stick with the recipe book, I did continue making bone broth for my dogs. It's a really cheap, really easy, and really healthy way to keep them hydrated. This is good for their bladders and kidneys, and also makes me feel like a fabulous dog owner. Or a basket case. Maybe both.

Anyway, here's my basic recipe for bone broth:

• Take some bones (any type, cooked or raw, meat on them or not, leftover steak bones from your dinner, they don't all have to be the same type of bones, whatever, it doesn't really matter).
• Put them in a crockpot. Fill the crockpot with water.
• Set the crockpot on low heat for like a day or two. Add more water if it gets low.
• Throw away the bones. Strain the broth, or not. Feel free to feed any boneless meat sludge to your dog.

Ta-da! You can throw your leftover roast chicken carcass, or Thanksgiving turkey bones, or whatever in. Maybe save them in the freezer till you have enough to fill the pot. Since Brisbane is allergic to poultry, I usually make beef or pork broth. Beef and pork feet are my favorite thing to use for broth because it ends up all gelatinous when it cools down. I usually add a tiny bit of salt, garlic powder, and occasionally herbs, but this is largely for my own aesthetic and doesn't really serve a purpose.

After a day or two, I shut off the crockpot and let the broth cool for a bit. I used to strain it through cheesecloth, but then I realized the dogs probably enjoy all the little meat bits and stuff in there so now I just scoop stuff out with a slotted spoon. I toss the bones and add the boiled meat to their dinners for the next couple of days. 

Homemade broth doesn't have much of a shelf life, so I freeze it in sandwich bags and microwave it as needed. The dogs appreciate a warm dinner, and Ru will actually drink an entire bowl of liquid with his dinner. Truly amazing. There's really not anything bad about it either, it's low in fat, high in vitamins, and doesn't have any salt unless you put some in there. It's just plain tasty goodness, and even super picky anorexic dogs seem to love it.

Treat Tuesday: DIY Pill Pockets Again

I started making my own pill pocket treats for Brisbane a couple of months ago, and since then I have made a few batches and learned a few things I wanted to share. Briz is allergic to chicken, turkey, duck, and eggs, and every flavor of Greenies Pill Pockets contains either chicken or duck. Here are the batches I have attempted so far:

Coconut flour/beef babyfood/coconut oil: It has been super hot here for the last several months with no sign of cooling off anytime soon. It has been so hot for so long that I forgot what coconut oil does when it gets cold. Like most fats, coconut oil turns to a nice hard solid when refrigerated. This batch of pill treats went from perfect texture to rock hard once I stuck them in the fridge. We still used them, but I had to let them sit out or roll them around in my hands a bit before I could squish the pills into them.

Coconut flour/bacon/bacon fat: Guess what else goes hard in the fridge? Bacon fat! These were definitely a lot tastier than the babyfood ones, but I ended up adding some peanut butter to get the texture right.

Unlike most bloggers, I am willing to show you my sloppily-formed
DIY pill pockets in all their lumpy glory.

Rice flour/Steak/Liver/Bone Broth/ Peanut Butter: I just made a huge batch of these and forming them into little pockets took forever. I tried adding a bit of xanthan gum to see how it changed the texture, but I don't think it did much. Maybe next time I'll add some gelatin for curiosity's sake. Yet again, I didn't set out to make these peanut butter treats, but I ended up adding it to help with the texture.

My ideal pill pocket texture is as close to the freshly-opened Greenies Pill Pockets as I can make it. This is a lot like playdough, it needs to stick to itself and be easily squished from one shape into another, but not be so sticky that the tub of them turns into an amorphous blob. This latest batch really didn't stick to itself, it resisted being rolled into shape and instead had to be smooshed rather firmly. I know that cream of tartar is what gives a homemade playdough its distinctive texture, maybe I should try that next.

DIY: Homemade Pill Pockets for Dogs with Allergies

Pill Pockets are super convenient for dogs that need to take pills, but my dog is allergic to them. All of the regular flavors, barbecue, peanut butter, are made out of chicken liver. The allergy formula Pill Pockets are duck-based, no good for dogs with poultry allergies like Brisbane. I discovered other pill treats that were safe for his allergies, but they were pretty expensive to use on a regular basis. I began to wonder how hard it would be to make something like that myself.

A quick Google search for 'diy Pill Pockets' led me to this site, which provides a simple recipe for peanut butter pill treats.

This easy recipe, which I can't actually attribute to anyone since the author of the above blog states that they discovered it via googling, uses only three ingredients. It calls for two parts flour, one part milk, and one part peanut butter. Knead the ingredients together and add a little more flour or milk until you have a nice playdough texture. This can be stored as-is or formed into balls or pockets. I was somewhat shocked at how lovely the ones shown on that site ended up, but the author mentions that hers didn't look like that so it's probably a stock photo after all.

After reading a few more recipes, I was able to generalize this formula so it can be used with a wide variety of ingredients. The formula is:

2 parts something dry

1 part something wet

1 part something oily

Pretty general, right? The ratios will need to be adjusted a bit as you make it, but they're a good place to start. It's basically a playdough recipe. Heck, I used to make peanut butter playdough with my daycare kids out of a recipe like this, we used powdered sugar, honey, and peanut butter. The trick is to use ingredients that dogs think are tasty.

Dry Ingredients: You'll need some sort of flour, but it doesn't need to be regular wheat flour. Thanks to the gluten fad, there are a ton of alternative flours available. For this project, I went to the bulk section of my local Whole Foods store. I purchase approximately one cup each of tapioca flour, garbanzo bean flour, and coconut flour. They also had rice flour, and there are a ton of other grain/nut/starch flours out there. It doesn't even technically have to be a type of flour, I'm sure that chicken powder or anything with a powdery texture would work.

Wet Ingredients: I've tried yogurt, and meaty baby food so far. I also plan to try broth, canned dog food, liver paste, and meat that has been whizzed in a food processor. Applesauce, mashed bananas, or any other type of fruit puree might work, but I would be sure to use at least one really super-tasty ingredient along with it. Water should also work just fine.

Oily Ingredients: Peanut butter is the one used in the original recipe, and it serves the dual purpose of making the treats taste awesome and providing the right doughy texture. I tried using coconut oil with pretty good results, probably any vegetable oil would work. Safflower oil would be good, even fish oil if you don't mind the smell. I plan to try hamburger grease and bacon grease next time I have some.

It's important to remember that these are supposed to be incredibly amazing treats full of awesomeness. The ingredients that meet those criteria will vary from dog to dog, but it's important to keep "awesome" in mind. Some dogs will love banana-coconut oil-rice flour treats, but picky dogs may turn their noses up. The relative health of each ingredient isn't a big consideration, as long as it does not upset your dog's tummy. Remember that half the recipe is made up of flour, and that a little of each goes a long way. I've been mixing these up using a tablespoon as "1 part", and a single tablespoon of bacon grease gets turned into a least a dozen treats.

How Do I Make Them 'Pill Pocket'-Shaped?
Some of the people who shared their recipes on various sites mentioned that they mix up their pill dough and then just store it in a big wad and pull off pieces as they need them. I had been dishing up Brisbane's pills in a lump of peanut butter, and individually rolling pills in dough every single day didn't seem particularly less inconvenient.

The Zoe Pill Pops come in individual chunks, but I have to moosh the pill into each one. I wanted something as convenient as the brand-name pill pockets.

To make these, I divided my lump of dough into little chunks, and then rolled each one into a ball, I pressed the back of a chopstick into the ball and then reformed it around the end of the stick. Twist the stick to remove it, and you have a less-than-perfect but highly functional treat that is all ready for you to hide a pill. These are generally going to be perishable, I recommend storing them in an airtight container in the refrigerator. I also successfully froze and defrosted a batch.

My first round of DIY pill pockets were tapioca flour-yogurt-peanut butter, and both Brisbane and foster dog Xena enjoyed them, though Ru and a visiting dog with dental issues both turned them down. The second was a batch of garbanzo bean flour-beef babyfood-coconut oil, but it turns out that garbanzo bean flour has a very strong taste that my dogs don't like, so everybody hated them. The third was a coconut flour-beef babyfood-coconut oil batch, which only Brisbane liked. So far tapioca flour seems to be the favorite dry ingredient over here. I fully intend to make some tapioca flour-applesauce-bacon grease pockets in the near future.

Food Friday: Bacon Applesauce Peanut Butter Cake

I bake a birthday cake for Brisbane every year. It is always frosted with cream cheese, and usually made from whatever I have around the house. Last year was applesauce banana oatmeal hamburger cupcakes. This year I made a bacon applesauce peanut butter cake.

Cooking for dogs pretty awesome because it's basically impossible to mess up. Like my husbands co-workers, dogs are happy to eat whatever you make, no matter how it turns out. Soggy? Cool. Crumbly? No problem! Greasy? Awesome! Tasteless? Tasty!

I often make cupcakes for Brisbane's birthday because I can just slap a pile of cream cheese on top no matter how they come out. Add sprinkles and they look deceptively like regular old cupcakes.

Following my foolproof method for making dog cake (something tasty, something wet, something dry) I started by browning several strips of bacon. I like maple-flavored chewy bacon, Brisbane is significantly less picky and likes all forms of bacon and bacon-like foods.

Next, I added a few spoonfuls of applesauce and peanut butter and whizzed it in the food processor with the bacon. I used rice flour for this cake, adding a little at a time until I got the consistency of cake batter. Had I wanted to make a grain-free cake, I could have used potato flour, garbanzo bean flour, almond flour, etc.

My goal for this cake was to end up with something I could frost and decorate like a tiny sheet cake. I baked this one in a loaf pan, so it came out long and skinny. Once it had cooled enough, I dumped it onto a cutting board and sliced it into a more pleasing rectangle.

Cream cheese spread makes a great non-sugary frosting for dog cakes. Some years I add food coloring, this year I left it white to keep up the sheet cake appearance. It spreads best when the tub has been left out of the fridge for a couple of hours to warm up.

The decorative touches on this cake are made from store-bought decorator frosting. I might be able to pipe cream cheese like decorator frosting, but it's tough to get the right consistency and this year I was feeling sort of lazy.

I think this year's dog cake came out rather well. It still looked like a miniature sheet cake when sliced. It did have five or six strips of bacon in it, but nobody here has had any tummy trouble after eating it. If my dogs had any history of sensitive stomachs or pancreatitis I probably wouldn't be feeding them bacon and cake frosting. This is a once-a-year treat.

DIY: Using a Regular Harness as a Front-Clip Harness

Front-clip harnesses, where the leash attaches to a ring in front of the dog's chest instead of behind their shoulders, have become popular training aids in the last few years. They discourage pulling by changing the angle and direction of leash attachment so that the dog has minimal leverage when moving forward. When the dog pulls forward, the harness uses that force to turn the sideways or back toward the handler.

Photo by Erin Koski

The current front-clip harness lineup includes the Premier EasyWalk, the Freedom harness by 2 Hounds Design, the SENSE-ation harness by Souftouch Concepts, the Walk Your Dog with Love harness. the Walk-in-Sync harness, the Walk Right harness, the Halti harness, the Lupine No-Pull Harness, and probably a few that I haven't heard about yet.

What do all of these harnesses have in common? They each have a ring in the front where a leash can be attached. Know what else has a ring in the front? A Roman-style harness. Mesh and vest-style harnesses don't normally have a front ring, but plain old walking harnesses tend to have one where the straps on either side of the neck meet the strap that goes between the front legs.

Normally the leash would attach to the D-ring at the back of this harness, but it can also attach to the O-ring at the front. Ta-da, it's now a front-clip harness.

Cheapass Dog Fun: Non-Perishable Kong Stuffing

Every so often I get inspired and creative and stuff my Kongs and other food toys with sweet potatoes, bananas, applesauce, green beans, and canned dog food. I will inevitably regret this later when I find said Kong under the couch and full of mold a week later.

My dogs rarely empty a Kong completely, and we are all much happier when I accept this and stuff them accordingly. Sticking with non-perishable goodies means never finding a Kong full of green fur. If I stuff the toys in a very precise fashion, I might not even need to scrub peanut butter out of them after the dogs are done.

Peanut Butter is my standard stuffing, and each time I try something new I end up going back to it. The big jar lives in the refrigerator, but this stuff is shelf-stable. A peanut butter-stuffed Kong can spend months lost under the furniture and come back looking no worse for the wear. Peanut butter feels wet and sticky, but it actually has a very low moisture content, which prevents bacterial and fungal growth. The oil in it will eventually go rancid after a year or so, but it doesn't get gross hanging out inside a Kong under the couch for a few weeks. Heck, it could probably sit under there for a few months and still come out pretty much the same way it went in.

Brisbane and Ulysses cannot reach all the way to the bottom of a large or extra large Kong with their tongues. If I smear peanut butter all the way down to the bottom, I will have to scrub a solid plug of it out when they're done. For this reason, I usually start my Kong-stuffing with something dry and bulky to fill the space. A small scoop of kibble works, but I normally like to use something less dense. Broken up Cloud Star Buddy Biscuits and Zukes Skinny Bakes are currently my favorite things to cram in there.

Next I use a butter knife to spread peanut butter all the way around the inside walls of the Kong. A few more small biscuits help fill the space in the middle, and then I seal off the opening with more peanut butter. Sometimes I stick a biscuit in the opening for them to break off before they begin the unstuffing project.

This "How to Stuff a Kong Toy" diagram is all over the internet, and it always makes me laugh because it was clearly drawn by someone with no sense of perspective. Either this is a gargantuan XXL Kong, or those bone-shaped biscuits are tiny. Our Kongs are mostly size large, and I don't think I've seen any bone-shaped biscuits significantly smaller than the inner diameter of the toy.

I've also seen those "marrow bites" dog treats they show in the "dessert" layer, and a large Kong could fit maybe one or two in there. Definitely not five. Honestly, I think my dogs find kibble to be higher value than most biscuits, those things are pretty bland, so offering them as a dessert seems kind of silly. I also like the "tantalizer" placed in the small hole at the end, my dogs totally ignore anything in there. Maybe one of these days I'll try putting something really exciting in it to see if they notice. I'm thinking Limburger cheese or something equally stinky. They love stinky treats.

My dogs need no "appetizer" sticking out of their Kongs, they're really just in it for the peanut butter. I keep trying to find something less nutritionally dense to stick in there, but apparently nothing else is worth quite as much effort. I'm not going to argue.

I do occasionally leave Buddy Biscuits sticking out of the top of the Kongs before I freeze them, but it's for my benefit rather than theirs. I don't think the dogs care. I just like seeing those little guys waving like they suspect nothing.

So far, as long as I stick with the dry biscuits/peanut butter formula, I have yet to scrub anything Lovecraftian out of a Kong toy.

Washing Kongs with No Dishwasher

As I always point out when sharing that a toy is dishwasher safe, not everyone has a dishwasher. My house is eighty years old and tiny, there's no dishwasher and no place to put one, so we have to hand-wash everything. This comes up a whole lot, since the standard answer to cleaning all manner of things is often "just throw it in the dishwasher". Countering this advice with "I don't have a dishwasher" gets old fast, even more so than perpetually having to inform people that I don't watch TV when they must know how I could possibly have missed that wonderful commercial everyone is talking about. It's an assumption that people with electric dishwasher don't even think about, which annoys me.

Step 1: Star with some gross dog toys.

For the benefit of those who live in dishwasherless domiciles, prefer to hand-wash their dog toys, or
find themselves needing to clean something really gross, here is how I get my dog toys clean with nothing but soap, water, and elbow grease. And scrub brushes. And vinegar. And sometimes bleach. No, actually don't bleach Kongs.

None of my dogs appear capable of cleaning out a Kong. I have mostly size large and one XL Extreme Kong, and neither Brisbane nor Ulysses can reach the very end of the inside when I stuff the toys with food. Less prissy dogs would probably chomp the thing a few times to break the goodies loose, but here they have already decided that they can't win this game. I don't tend to stuff the Kongs with anything perishable these days, but occasionally I lose my mind and decide to cram some mushy banana, baked sweet potato, or canned dog food in there.

I don't usually wash our Kongs immediately after use, and sometimes they get lost under the couch for a few days (or weeks!) and I find a mold-crusted Lovecraftian horror inside.

Step 2:Soak those things!

I have found that soaking makes everything less gross. It will disintegrate kibble and biscuits, and make horrifically decomposed meat and vegetable matter less icky and more likely to slide out. Depending on how gross the toys are, I may soak them in hot water with a healthy squirt of soap (peanut butter, dry biscuits, kibble), vinegar (rotten produce and canned food), bleach (mold!) or napalm (fish oil can go straight to hell).

The worst-case scenario at my house is a Kong or other food toy with a solid plug of horribly-spoiled stuffing packed into the small end. I get gross (and not-gross) stuff unstuck from flexible rubber toys by putting them on the floor and stomping on them a few times. This is basically what unprissy dogs do when they chomp rubber toys to get the food out.

I also bash the toys opening-down on my granite counter to work the stuffing loose. Between this and the stomping I rarely have to use tools to scoop disgusting crap out of things. I also once pounded the Biggie Bone with the smooth side of a meat tenderizer to break up a particularly stubborn wad of goo.

My arsenal.

I don't think there is any one cleaning tool that would serve all of my dog-toy-scrubbing needs, I routinely use at least three or four different brushes. Kong used to make a Classic Kong-shaped scrub brush for cleaning their toys, but the handle of mine snapped off the second time I used it. Brushes designed for cleaning assorted baby-feeding apparatus are perfect for cleaning dog toys. My baby bottle brush even came with a tiny brush that's perfect for scrubbing hard-to-reach places on stupidly-designed toys like the Starpod. The round dish-scrubber is great for getting crud and hair off the outsides of the toys, and that Christmas tree-shaped brush is awesome for cleaning tapered cavities like the ones in the Urban Stick.

My favorite thing about baby-stuff brushes is that they are intended to be replaced frequently, so they are cheap and really easy to find. My last baby brush had a suction cup on the bottom so it could be stood upright to dry.

All Kongs have a small hole in the end to prevent the toy from accidentally suctioning to the dog's face. One of the ways I de-stick food from the inside of the toy is by holding the hole against the faucet and forcing water through it. This sometimes results in water spraying all over the kitchen, but never fails to flush out the crud. This also works on the Kong Marathon, assorted Starmark toys and pretty much any toy that has more than one hole.

Sometimes a rubber toy that has been through true horror will continue to stink after all traces of its adventures have been scrubbed away. I employ various methods to remove the smell depending on the toy and what I have on hand. Normally I use environmentally-friendly biodegradable dish soap, but sometimes I break out the blue original Dawn when I need weapons-grade detergent. Smelly toys can be soaked in diluted vinegar, or even straight vinegar, though this may just make them smell like vinegar instead. Depending on the smell, this can be an improvement. I've soaked all sorts of things in bleach solution, with enough rinsing and plenty time I believe the bleach will neutralize itself, but I am waiting to hear back from the Kong Company as to whether this is a recommended method for cleaning nasty Kongs. Any toy that is dishwasher-safe should also be safe to boil for a few minutes to sterilize it.

I usually leave the toys in the dish rack or on the windowsill to dry, sometimes I skip this step and just restuff and freeze them immediately. In her Behavioral Adjustment Training book, Grisha Stewart says she skips the cleaning step entirely and just puts the toys back in the freezer as soon as the dogs are done with them. I'd probably do this if I didn't have to worry about getting dog hair in the peanut butter.

"My Dog Doesn't Like Everlasting Treats"

I am a big fan of Starmark dog toys, but sometimes it's hard to get my dogs on board. I know there are more natural, healthier things for them to gnaw, like raw bones, but I can't beat Everlasting Treats for their ability to remain ungross while spending weeks lost under the furniture. We do raw bones pretty frequently, but outdoors or in bare crates. I'm not about to give anyone the opportunity to gnaw a beef rib on the couch.

Everlasting Treat Ball with treat inserted upside down.

As far as raw bones versus Everlasting Treats go, the dogs are strongly in favor of the bones. They're all willing to gnaw an Everlasting Treat on its own, but put it in an Everlasting Treat Ball or Bento Ball and it suddenly ceases to be worth the effort. I tell them "Look, you and I both know that you would be happier spending the day blissfully gnawing this thing than just staring at the wall in your crate." But they refuse to touch them, sometimes for weeks. Putting smelly, exciting treats and peanut butter in the middle does not spur them to start chewing. I tried dribbling fish oil into an Everlasting Treat Ball once, which inspired Briz to gnaw for hours but also got smelly, impossible-to-clean fish oil all over the crate, bed, floor, and Uly.

When I watched Starmark's Everlasting Treat video recently, I noticed that they sometimes had the Everlasting Treats inserted into the toys upside down. The treats are dome-shaped, and normally go in the toy with the domed side facing out to provide a nice chewing surface. An upside down treat leaves very little to grip and also leaves a handy little bowl.

Upside down treat filled with peanut butter.

I filled that bowl with peanut butter and froze the whole thing. By the time Uly had slurped off all the frozen peanut butter, the treat had gotten to that slobbery, smelly state where it apparently become irresistible. He spent several hours working on this project, ate one of the Everlasting Treats and started working on the second when he had to take a nap to recover from all that effort. The Treat Ball is quite scratched up and no longer looks brand new, but that just means it is finally being used as intended.

Most of my local stores only carry chicken-flavored Everlasting Treats, which Brisbane can't have and Uly and Ru won't eat. Lemos carries liver flavored treats, and Petco carries the interlocking nut-and-bolt Everlasting Treats in chicken flavor, but nobody has non-chicken Everlocking Treats. I ordered this one from Amazon. These are easier for the dogs to get a grip on, and aren't as good a value as the original Everlasting Treats, but sometimes I buy them just for the cool factor. This time around I put one of the treat "nuts" inside the Bento Ball dome-side down, screwed the bolt through it, and then wound the second "nut" on the outside. Brisbane might find this setup worth chewing, but I made it even more exciting by squirting some canned cheese in the bowl and through the bottom before sticking it in the freezer.

I am beginning to wish I had gotten a large Treat Dispensing Jack instead of the medium, since the holes in the medium are small enough to make funnel-filling it ineffective. Brisbane and Uly don't like getting anything bigger than kibble out of it. I bet they'll enjoy getting the Cheeze-Wiz out. Not sure I'm going to enjoy washing it when they're done, though.

Cheapass Dog Fun: Fill Food Toys Fast

This isn't actually my idea, I got it from the Starmark website. They demonstrated how to make a funnel out of the top of a soda bottle, and then use it to fill their Treat Dispensing Chew Ball.

Different-sized bottles, same size lids.

Soda bottles have standard-sized openings, and some brands have nice funnel-shaped tops. Cut the top off and the result is a funnel big enough to pour kibble through, with an end that will fit into most toys. As an added bonus, the funnels can be tossed and replaced as needed, and are easier to clean than most store-bought funnels. This has seriously changed my life as far as loading toys with goodies, now I can just scoop kibble into them instead of shoving it piece by piece.

Everlasting Bento Ball

Planet Dog Orbee Ball

Kong Marathon

Kong Quest Wishbone

Starmark Everlasting Treat Ball

Busy Buddy Squirrel Dude