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)

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.

Book Review: Dinner Pawsible

Dinner Pawsible is a cookbook for people who want to make healthy and nutritious meals for their dogs and cats. It is a collaborative work between a veterinarian and a pet food safety advocate. Both have been using these recipes to feed their own animals for years, and they want other pet owners to understand how manageable that really is.

Photo by Erin Koski

I really like the premise of this book. Most people don't eat dried 100% complete and balanced food at every meal. We provide our bodies with all the things they need by eating a wide variety of foods over time. By not limiting ourselves to a narrow diet, we can avoid nutrient deficiencies and compensate for less-than-perfect foods.

It makes sense that we could do the same for our dogs, fellow omnivores that they are. All we need to do is provide them with enough variety, and things should sort themselves out, right? A lot of homemade pet diets are limited to just a few ingredients, though. Homemade pet food tends to be deficient in one way or another, whether it's calcium, phosphorous, or vitamins it lacks.

Dinner Pawsible is intended to take all the guesswork out of feeding your dog a homemade diet by providing an entire book of recipes made from a wide variety of ingredients. There are directions on how to choose, store, and prepare each ingredient, from fish to liver to carrots. Readers are advised to use as much variety as they can when planning meals for their pets. The book promises that not only will our pets will be healthier and happier eating real food cooked just for them, but it will also save us money.

We saw a squirrel.
Photo by Erin Koski

Before purchasing Dinner Pawsible, I wondered if there would be any recipes in there suitable for Brisbane and his chicken/turkey/duck/egg allergies. I went as far as emailing one of the authors, and was told that there was absolutely nothing wrong with substituting pork, lamb, rabbit, ostrich, or any other Briz-safe meats I could get my hands on. Cool.

My enchantment at this new, less expensive way of feeding my beloved dogs lasted until the book arrived and I began reading the ingredient preparation instructions. The book instructs us to use organic free-range grass-fed everything, and includes ingredients like oysters. Do you have any idea how much oysters cost?! Knowing that nutritionally the differences between organic and conventional foods are basically non-existent, I decided to stick with meats I could actually afford.

I actually read the entire book cover to cover in a few days, just to see what sort of substitutions I would need to make. I knew I could pretty much swap any meat for any other meat, but what was a good substitute for eggs? Next I wandered over to the book's Facebook page, where several other people had similar questions. The general attitude of the authors was that any vegetables would do, eggs could be left out or added in all willy nilly, and that following the recipes to the letter wasn't really in the spirit of the Dinner Pawsible.

"Wait a minute," I thought to myself. "If any meat and vegetables in any amount will do, what's the point of even having recipes? I thought this stuff sort of mattered a little." Still, I was determined to cook for my dogs. When I went to actually select a recipe, I realized something I had missed on my first read-through. The recipes in Dinner Pawsible are VERY carbohydrate-heavy. They are all based on either rice, pasta, or beans. For those who wish to avoid grains, the authors recommend substituting sweet potatoes. The ratio of these to actual meats just feels wrong, though. These recipes generally have something like 2-3 cups of cooked rice/past/beans/vegetables and maybe half a cup of meat.

I've been feeding my dogs mostly grain-free foods since I discovered raw feeding over a decade ago. While I've softened my stance on grains and their place in canine diets, it's tough to shake the feeling that a decent portion of their food should be meat. Dinner Pawsible wants me to feed one part meat to six parts starches and veggies, and that feels wrong. No, I have nothing to back this up other than a gut feeling.

Between the unappealing idea of feeding my dogs rice with a little meat mixed in, and the number of substitutions required to make the recipes suitable for my allergy dog, I can say my enthusiasm for Dinner Pawsible has waned significantly. I will still spice up my dogs' dinners with raw and cooked meats, cottage cheese and yogurt, cooked vegetables, and maybe even oysters, but this wasn't the book I needed to make the jump into cooking entire meals for my dogs on a regular basis.

Do you ever cook for your dogs?

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.

Cheapass Dog Fun: Bake a Super Easy Dog Cake!

Brisbane's birthday is tomorrow, and we're taking cupcakes to daycare to celebrate. These were some fairly high-effort cupcakes, but dogs are the easiest friends to cook for because they literally have no standards. To make halfway decent cookies and cakes for humans, you need at least half a dozen ingredients to achieve the correct texture and taste. Dog cookies and cakes work with two or three ingredients, and need no leavening agents or spices.

Five ingredients for fancy cupcakes.

Ingredients

1. Something Tasty. I've used peanut butter, cheese in all forms including canned, and ground or diced meat of any sort. Leftover stew, meatloaf, or casserole works, too.

2. Something Dry. Flour, oatmeal, cornmeal, almond meal, cooked rice, cooked pasta, bread, crackers, cereal, chips. 

3. Something Wet. Cooked, canned, or mashed fruit or vegetables, eggs, juice, or even water will work.

Last year's cake was made out of leftover Swedish meatballs and crushed Special K cereal. This year I decided to go all-out and make something pretty. Brisbane's birthday cupcakes (pupcakes?) are made out of ground beef, quick oats, banana, applesauce, and canned parmesan cheese. 

Too crumbly, needs some wet stuff.

I browned the ground beef because I didn't want the cupcakes to be too greasy. If I were using something less squishy, like steak or chunks of cheese, I would have chopped or shredded it, or maybe just run it through the blender or food processor. I threw in the parmesan cheese just because I saw it in a dog biscuit recipe once and thought it was neat.

Eggs and flour make a really good binder for sticking everything together in baked goods, but Brisbane is allergic to eggs, so I have to use other sticky things. I used quick oats and applesauce instead, because oats can be used as a binder in meatloaf, and applesauce helps keep everything moist.

I considered adding ground flax, baked or microwaved sweet potato, and shredded carrots to this recipe, but I was feeling lazy today. I did throw in a mushy banana because it was convenient.

The correct texture is kind of doughy.

I didn't actually measure any of these ingredients, I just started by adding all of the ones that I had the least amount of. One banana, one pound of browned and drained ground beef, and as much parmesan cheese as I was willing to feed to the dogs. Then I poured oats and applesauce in and mixed it. Too dry and crumbly? Add more applesauce. Too wet? Add more oats. 

I was shooting for a fairly dry and doughy texture, wetter would have been fine but also would have taken longer to bake. Too dry and the cupcakes might have come out crumbly. If I had wanted to make dog biscuits instead of cake, I could have made the mixture even dryer and then shaped it into flat patties and baked it on a cookie sheet.

The nice thing about this mixture is that it has nothing that I expect to expand or contract while cooking. This gives me the freedom to shape the final product before it goes in the oven.

I filled the first round of cupcake liners sparingly, the second batch would be mounded over. I originally set the oven timer for 10 minutes because I didn't think anything really epic would happen to them that quickly. When the timer beeped I tried stabbing one with a fork, which came out pretty greasy. After another ten minutes they looked a little more dry so I decided they were done.

The dog cupcakes came out slightly greasy, but not too bad at all. I frosted them with cream cheese because it looks deceptively like icing.

The waiting is the hardest part.

I could have left these plain, but I have fun decorating them. This year I just went with regular rainbow sprinkles to make them look as much like people cupcakes as possible. Are regular sprinkles good for dogs? No. Will a dozen sprinkles on a cupcake hurt a dog? Probably not.

These are definitely major treats for my dogs. The cream cheese and beef makes them a high-calorie and fatty special-occasion food. If this were more than a once-a-year event I would probably skip the tablespoon of frosting on each cupcake.

Happy Birthday Briz!