Homemade Pet Treats: Animals Need REAL Food Too!!!!

Wedding photos even included our girls!

If you are anything like me, your pets are your babies.  I love my animals and I would do just about anything for them.  For those of you who don't know, we have two dogs and a cat.  Hallie is a chocolate lab who is about 12 years old and Lexi is a mixed black lab who is 13 years old.  My husband rescued Lexi when he was in college from the pound.  She immediately got sick and the vet was not even sure if she was going to make it.  Well she made it, hundreds of dollars later.  Hallie is a purebred chocolate lab that we call a rescue also.  Not in the typical sense of the word, but S "rescued" her from a neglectful ex girlfriend when he was in college as well.  Yikes, I know, two big dogs in college.  Don't worry, it was towards the end.

Lexi (left) and Hallie (right) love the beach

Ellie, the cat, is a stray whose mother abandoned her on our front porch in Puerto Rico when she was 3 weeks old.  I had to feed her by dropper every 3 hours for weeks until she was big enough to start eating real food.  See what I mean about doing anything for my babies?  It was like a practice run for a real baby.

She was about four or five weeks old here. Hallie is so sweet, she didn't even care.

We used to feed our dogs kibble just like everyone else.  They always had different health issues, but nothing too terribly serious, we thought.  Hallie had a weight problem and Lexi had skin issues, but it was all manageable.  Back in December 2012, we were getting ready for our big move to PR.  Everyone was relatively healthy.  For Christmas we had gotten the girls some chicken jerky treats.  It was supposed to be all natural and the ingredients were "chicken".  Sounds great, huh?  Well Christmas night, exhausted from all the festivities, S had gone to bed early.  I was getting ready to go to bed, but decided to let the dogs out one last time.  The next thing I know, I see a commotion in the yard, but can't tell what is going on.  Then Lexi can't walk and is terribly confused.  I realize she has either had a stroke or a seizure.  I manage to get her up the steps and inside, so I can see her better, but she is still confused and terrified.  I wake Scott and we get her to the emergency vet.  While there, Lexi is improving rapidly and the vet tells us that she had a seizure.  They aren't sure why but they want to know if we have given them anything new.  "No, no, nothing" I tell them.  We are sent home with instructions to monitor her closely.  The next day I see the treats that we had been giving them for a couple of days now and I realize that that is the only thing that has changed.  Even then we didn't have much in the way of chemicals in the house, so I knew it wasn't anything like that.  I immediately started doing some research and found out that "natural" jerky dog treats were a problem everywhere.  Yet pet stores keep selling them.  As it turns out, hundreds of dogs were dying of kidney failure, seizures, and various other manifestations of what, we still don't know.  Of course there have been lame attempts at "investigation" but, ultimately, nothing came of it because stores all over the country are still selling them to this day.  Obviously we stopped feeding them the treats and everything has been fine since.

Lexi doesn't like to admit she loves Ellie.

Fast forward to January 2013.  We had just moved to Puerto Rico and things were going pretty well.  The ration of old dog food (kibble still) that we had brought with us was getting low, so we made the hour plus journey to Petsmart in Ponce.  Once there, we bought the same dog food we always bought for each dog.  Lexi was eating normal food and Hallie was on some expensive, "natural" weight management food.  A few days later Hallie started vomiting water like clockwork every afternoon.  For a while I just thought the heat and the stress of the move and living in an apartment were getting to her.  Then I started thinking she was urinating too often.  My crazy mom brain started thinking that maybe she was becoming diabetic.  Finally, it occurred to me to look up her dog food.  It turns out that the expensive, natural food company had just changed their formula (I refuse to call it a recipe as it is not real food) and it was, again, killing dogs and causing severe, irreversible illness.  This was the last straw.  I stopped the food and started her on the same (even cheaper) food that Lexi was on for the time being.

Ellie wants to be big like her sisters

I started researching what to feed pets and ultimately realized that animals need REAL food too.  Animals in the wild aren't going around eating poultry bi product meal, corn gluten meal, and artificial caramel coloring.  So I bought a bunch of books, did a bunch of internet research, and finally came to the conclusion that I needed to start feeding my dogs real food.  DUH!!!  Now they are fed a mixture of vegetables, meat, and either brown rice or oatmeal.  It is a ton of extra work, but it is totally worth it.  They have less health problems, Hallie has finally lost the extra weight that she has carried her whole life, and they enjoy their food more.  We have learned to plan ahead and make about a week's worth of food at once and freeze the majority.  We also always have vegetable broth on hand now, without wasting all of the vegetables that go into stock normally.  We boil their veggies to cook them and just freeze the resulting stock in 2 or 3 cup portions.

Another happy beach day!

Along with this real daily food, I realized that I needed to start feeding them real food treats on occasion as well.  The books I bought had many suggestions for daily treats such as apples, which they LOVE, carrots, and broccoli stems.  These treats can be given on a daily basis if you want, but I wanted something crunchy that would clean their teeth better and give them a real treat.  So I turned to the internet once again.  Raw bones are apparently great for them, but as a vegetarian, I can't handle the idea of wet, raw bones on the couch and in my bed, which is where they like to take their treats.  I do however, make jerky for them in the dehydrater, which they also love.  But, I also wanted to use up the chicken broth that results from boiling their chicken thighs or whole chicken (thighs are way easier to pluck, for the record.)  I hate to waste the stuff, but for awhile I was just throwing the broth down the drain.  Obviously I'm not going to eat it.  Sometimes if I have to make grains the same day as meat, I will substitute chicken broth for water, but that doesn't always happen.  Instead I have found a number of recipes for dog biscuits online.

Ellie trying to play with Hallie.

Today I am going to show you how I make my modified version of the basic dog biscuits found here.  I encourage you to find what works for you.  Oh and for the record, the cat loves these treats too.  But she also grew up in this weird, hippie house for all six months of her life.  I don't guarantee that your cat will like these too.      

All of the ingredients

Adding the wet ingredients to the dry. My egg was a double yolk!

The dough after kneading.

Rolled out to about a 1/2 inch thick

Using a pizza cutter to make uniform pieces.

All cut up. The weird sized ones become Ellie's smaller pieces.

Kitty size treats.

Ready to go in the oven.

Nice and cool and ready to be eaten.

Homemade Whole Food Dog Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups of whole wheat flour

1/2 cup steel cut oats

1/2 tsp. sea salt (don't add salt if the broth already has added salt)

1 egg

1/2 cup homemade chicken broth

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  

2. Mix whole wheat flour, steel cut oats, and salt together in a large bowl. 

3. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the egg and the chicken broth.  

4. Mix well and knead the dough until it forms a ball that is not too sticky. 

5. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface to about 1/2 inch thick.  

6. Use a pizza cutter or cookie cutter to make the shapes of your choice, keeping in mind that size will determine cooking time, then pierce with a fork to avoid air bubbles.

7. Place the cookies on a cookie sheet lined with unbleached parchment paper and bake for 30 minutes or until firm.  They should barely give when pressed with your finger. 

8. Remove to a cooling rack and let cool completely. Treats should be hard once they have cooled. 

9. Store in an airtight container in the freezer.  

IMPORTANT NOTE: 

If you are going to use premade or store bought chicken broth, I beg you to please please please read the label in its entirety.  Make sure that there is nothing artificial in it, or else what is the point of making these?  But most importantly do not use anything that has onions or xylitol in it.  

What kind of treats do you give to your pets?  Do you make your own treats?  Will you try now that you know how easy they are?

-Donna