Puppy Treat Love

When my daughter came to visit over the Christmas and New Year holidays, I made several trips to Trader Joe’s to purchase food she could eat without having an adverse reaction (she’s allergic to corn). While I was there I bought a box of peanut butter dog treats for Lexy. By the middle of January, we’d given Lexy all the treats from that box. I decided that since I’ve been making her dog food for a couple of months now, I might as well make her treats. That way, I control the ingredients and it’s also fun.

I searched for a peanut butter dog biscuit recipe and found several but one in particular caught my eye – a peanut butter pumpkin recipe. I was intrigued because our vet had us give Porthos pumpkin with his food whenever he had diarrhea. Apparently, pumpkin and chicken are easy for them to digest so that’s what Porthos ate for a couple of weeks last year until his tummy settled down.

I reviewed a half dozen recipes, most of which were just three simple ingredients – oats, pumpkin and peanut butter. Among the other items purchased at Trader Joe’s, I found myself with a couple of cans of organic pumpkin. So I added oats and peanut butter to my grocery list and came home with enough to make a large batch of this recipe I found among my dog treat search results: https://www.rachaelrayshow.com/recipes/peanut-butter-dog-treats-with-pumpkin-susan-holmes-mckagan

Please be VERY CAREFUL which peanut butter you give your dog – it must NOT contain the artificial sweetener xylitol. Most Natural peanut butters are xylitol free but double-check the ingredients to be safe.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/paws-xylitol-its-dangerous-dogs

I actually tried the recipe first using the proportions specified: 1/3 c. pumpkin, 1/4 c. peanut butter and 1 c. oat flour (made from my old-fashioned organic oats in my food processor). However, the yield from this recipe was woefully inadequate for a 75-pound Rottweiler. Lexy was going to be begging for more treats in just a few days.

This morning I increased the original recipe so that it uses an entire 15-ounce can of pumpkin (I really don’t like opening up a can of something only to use one-third of the ingredients).

Here’s what I mixed up today and baked for Lexy.

---

P-O-PB Dog Treats

• 4-5 cups of old-fashioned oats
• 15-ounce can of pumpkin
• 3/4 c. natural peanut butter

Preheat oven to 300 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Process oats in food processor until they resemble a fine powder.

Place the pumpkin, peanut butter and oat powder in mixing bowl and form a sticky dough. I used the dough hook on my stand mixer for this step.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough until about 1/2 inch thick. I used my dog bone shaped cookie cutter to cut out the treats from the rolled dough.

Arrange treats on prepared baking sheet and bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Let cool and then serve to your favorite canine.

---

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I basically tripled the original recipe but I forgot to make note of how many treats I ended up with from the original recipe. Probably a dozen because I rolled out the dough too much – some of the treats were a quarter inch thick that first time. This time I made sure I was closer to a half inch. This batch yield twenty-seven dog treats with a bit left over (probably could have gotten two maybe three treats out of the left over).

This recipe is super-easy to make and bake. Less than an hour of my time on a Saturday morning to provide some healthy wholesome home-made treats for my favorite Rottweiler.