Following on from my decision to try and remove as many additives as possible from Ripple's diet I have been extending my repertoire of home made treats. I made my normal sardine and oat biscuits but cut them into tiny squares before baking, these went down so well that when I went shopping today I bought all sorts of bits that I'd seen used in recipes for dog treats (In fact any supermarket monitoring my trolley would have thought I'd had a brainstorm as I bought so much stuff I never normally use ) One of the recipes was for Coconut (Lab) dreams in the recipes section on here, but I'm a bit confused by the recipe. It uses coconut milk which I regularly use in cooking but I'm concerned it's a bit fattening, I wonder if anyone knows whether I should be using the low fat version? Also the recipe doesn't specify how much turkey mince, I've got quite a big packet of it. I see @kateincornwall you commented on the recipe, did you make the biscuits? Or can anyone give me some cooking help with it? I've also bought pork rind to make the pork scratchings on the BDWS website, and a chicken to roast for Ripple's treats. I did try him on chicken before and he didn't seem very enthusiastic but hopefully now he's more excited about my cooking he will be more interested in it. I also let Ripple help with unpacking the shopping so that got him interested as well .
Kate's taking a break from the forum at the moment, so I know she won't be around to answer your questions, sorry. I wouldn't worry about the coconut milk being fattening - it's not as if you're feeding any real quantity of it in one go, because you make the biscuits small and only use a handful or so a day. Same with the sardines - as an oily fish, they're high calorie, but it's not like that's all he's eating. To be honest, when I make treats for the dogs, I don't weigh anything! It tends to be a big slab of protein (tinned tuna, sardines, salmon, liver etc) blitzed up, then I add enough "stuff" to bind it together so that I can roll it out. I'll normally chuck in a couple of crushed garlic cloves for flavour, and if I want it more cakey than biscuity, an egg or two. Oil (if necessary), oats and flour go in to hold it all together. I make a massive batch which I then freeze half as dough and the rest as cooked biscuits. I then just grab a handful from the freezer to take out with me on a walk to training session. I don't think you need to be to picky about quantities with our Labs With the chicken, remember to leave the skin on - that's the best bit! And when you strip the carcass, you can use the cartilage as well as the meat.
Thank you @snowbunny, I'll get cooking . Also very helpful about the freezing as it does look like I'm going to making rather a lot of treats and I'll probably need to hide them from OH as he might think they're for him .
I try all the treats I make for the dogs. The tuna ones are pretty good! I've been known to sneak a bit of the dehydrated liver when I'm chopping it up, too
I think I might have overdone it with the turkey mince, I used my whole packet of rice flour and it was still too wet, I had to add some wholemeal flour to make it workable. I ended up with so much mixture I've only made a quarter of it into biscuits - and that made 40! I hope Ripple likes them or I'll have to tell OH they're for him . And the kitchen is in a state and I haven't even had anything to eat myself yet .
