Lovin’ from the Oven

Add this to the growing list of things I never imagined myself doing: baking homemade dog treats.

When our friend Kelly, a dog lover who manages our gym, learned Richard and I had a new pup, she emailed two of the recipes she uses to make treats for her dog.  “Dogs go crazy for these things,” she told me.  “They just love them!”

I was sure they did, but while I made it a point to pick up small bags of the oat flour and brown rice flour Kelly’s recipes called for, I wasn’t sure I was the kind of person who’d be spending time preparing “scratch” foods for his dog.

I’d recently learned our neighbor Patti has been feeding her dogs a raw food diet for years – a protocol in which each dog’s breakfast is an entire raw chicken breast, with other meals consisting of fish, bones, organ meats, and assorted other ground-up items.  I don’t doubt the health benefits of this approach, though the whole enterprise strikes me as incredibly labor intensive – and, well, a little grisly.  For now, Willie is eating a high quality dog food based on bison meat and brown rice (with a little added olive oil; more on that later).

Meanwhile, there are hundreds of ready-made treats on the market – chewy, cheesy, meaty, crispy, tasty treats in every shape, size, and variety — even cruelty-free, organic, and vegetarian.  I’ve seen bags and boxes and jars of these treats in many pet and feed stores, and before we brought Willie home we purchased a box of tiny dry biscuits (think Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers) as well as a zip bag of chewy, smoked chicken Kong treats.  Willie seems to love them both with equal passion.

We’ve been running low on treats but – being occupied with all the snow shoveling, ice scraping, and wood carrying, I hadn’t realized until this morning that Willie’s chewy chicken treats were all gone, and that we were basically down to a few broken biscuits at the bottom of the jar.  This sent me in search of Kelly’s email with those biscuit recipes, and as I write this, the first batch I made is cooling on a rack on the kitchen counter.

“Willie,” Richard says, “come!”  The pup trots from the living room into the kitchen to take the treat from Richard’s hand – a small, sand-colored bundle that would look at home among a platter of Italian bakery cookies.  It shatters when Willie bites it, revealing its surprising contents like a tiny piñata.  With tail wagging, Willie eats every last crumb off the floor.  It’s his first taste of anything that didn’t come in a bag with a UPC code on the side.  Like a hound, he sniffs the entire perimeter of the kitchen in case he might have missed a morsel, then proceeds to lick the baseboard molding beneath the oven.

“I guess he liked it,” I say.

Richard picks a biscuit up off the cooling rack, nibbles the edge, and hands it to me.  “It’s not bad,” he says.

SUM-TIN (special in every bite!)

RECIPE courtesy of

The Organic Dog Biscuit Cookbook from Bubba Rose Biscuit Company

FOR DOUGH:

1 c. oat flour, 1.5 c. brown rice flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 egg, ½ c. chicken broth

FILLING SUGGESTIONS:

Canned pumpkin; Cheese cubes (cheddar’s always a favorite); Small peeled apple pieces; Beef (cooked and ground or in small pieces(; Turkey (cooked and ground or in small pieces); Bacon (cooked and crumbled); Tuna; Peanut Butter (unsalted)

Combine all dough ingredients and mix thoroughly until a dough forms.

Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface in ¼” thickness.

Use a round cookie cutter or the rim of an upside down glass to cut 2.5” circles (*since we have a small dog, I made ours smaller).

Place a small amount of any of the suggest fillings – or another of your dog’s favorite things – in the center and press the edges up and together making a little bundle.

Place on an ungreased cookie sheet (they don’t rise, so they can be close together)

Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.  Remove from the oven and let cool completely on a wire rack.  Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.