A Healthy Dog Snack

I made something fun this evening. We'd run out of dog biscuits for our German Shepherd, Rommie, and I'd been dreading the idea of going to the store for some. Dog biscuits aren't an emergency--except maybe to the dog--but she'd been asking for them for the past few days and was no doubt starting to wonder why we didn't have any treats for her.

I had bought a book of healthy dog treat recipes for her for Christmas, and it came with a set of little dog-biscuit cookie cutters. So tonight I tried one. Due to ingredient availability, I had to change the recipe enough that other than some of the measurements, the ingredients are quite different from the original. For one, they're chicken-flavored, not beef. For another, I used equal amounts of brown rice flour and spelt flour--a German Shepherd is a hard-mouthed dog and they love to chew. So the fact that the resulting biscuits are now as hard as rocks is of no great importance to Rommie. She loved them, and I think that she understood that we were making a special treat just for her. She thought the dough was just as good raw as it was after it was baked. My younger daughter enjoyed helping cut out the shapes, including a big heart-shaped one for a special Valentines' Day gift. The cat liked the smell and taste of the treats when I crumbled one up and gave him a little of it--he just didn't want to have to chew something quite that hard. There was no baking soda or leavening agent of any kind in the recipe!

Our assessment is that it was fun, made with healthy ingredients, and very easy to do. It was nice to know exactly what was in it and where it all came from, and it was fun to see Rommie's reaction. It was also quite edible for humans--although if I were to eat one, I'd want to soak it in something to soften it first! It might make a great soup cracker, come to think of it.

Nah! Rommie knows they're for her, and when my husband tried a bite of one, she gave him a really funny look.