Dog treat production: something fishy

Fish treats - fresh out of the oven...

The blog post a few weeks back on "Go get meat!" "Secrets of making Amazing Cookies for training" got so much positive feedback and so many students in classes came in to class reporting they made those cookies and had amazingly willing, keen and happy workers - I decided I need to share another Favourite of Mine. 

This one: Fish Bread or Fish Cookies comes from my dear friend Catherine Thomas - shared many years ago...made and baked countless times since then with many different main ingredients. Any combo of fish, though, definitely seems to be a favourite among most dogs...and well - at least one of my two-legged human kids :-) 
When my daughter was just a wee toddler - she would sneak into the "Doggy cookies" (read: the container where she'd find these fish treats) and take handfuls at a time as a little savory snack. When other kids were eating a granola bar - she'd munch away on Fish bread!

So - there you go: an amazing training treat for dogs as well as a great snack for humans (those who enjoy fish)! Here's How: 

Pick up some canned fish. Look for the varieties that are packed in water and are low in salt/ no added salt. Tuna is definitely a favourite as far as taste - but because of mercury, it may be a good idea to switch it up and use other types of fish also. Sardines and salmon are also winners!!

So, this particular batch, documented in photos here are made with one tin of Sardines and one can of Tuna. Heat your oven to 375 F while you prep your dough.

Start with 2 eggs in a mixing bowl. Dump in the entire contents of the two cans of fish - liquid and all. Then add about 1 cup of water, and enough flour to mix everything into a nice, sticky and doughy ball. I tend to use whole wheat bread flour, as well as oats, but use what you have. 

 As the dough mixes into a ball, add 2 tablespoons of Olive oil (or other vegetable oil).

After mixing it all together, you will have a ball of sticky dough looking something like this (below). Dump it out on a cookie sheet covered with Parchment Paper and flatten it out until fairly thin using your hands. 

Below here you have it, the whole thing spread out over a large cookie sheet. Now you could stick it in the oven like this...BUT - here's a cool thing an experiment revealed...

IF - BEFORE baking - you take your pizza roller-knife and drive back and forth across the whole entire "bread" - first in one direction and then in the other...

 ...so that you end up with this lovely pattern of tiny bits (below). And then - if you BAKE IT like this - you get these wonderful "break-apart-pieces" that are totally MADE for training: you can just take a section of bread with you as you go and the pieces literally will break apart in your hand as you just wiggle the bread around. AND it doesn't crumble much :-)
(If you don;t do this step, you still get lovely bread - but it does crumble a lot more as you break it)

After pre-cutting and driving your pizza knife back and forth twice over the entire thing - bake at 375 F. 
I prefer these cookies baked on both sides...so will stick the cookie sheet in the oven and put the timer on for 25-30 min.. at which point, I pick up the whole bread with my oven mitts on and turn it upside-down (doesn't matter if it breaks in the process - as you can see mine did...). Put back in the oven for another 15-20 min. 

After that - when they come out - you literally have squares breaking off like this (below). See how handy that is to put in your training bag!?
I usually divide the yield into 4-6 plastic freezer bags and keep one out (in the fridge) - and put the others in the freezer. 

Awesome treats, or what?! If you decide to try them - would love to hear reports of how your dog (or child!!) received them? Please comment below - would love to hear!!!

Dog Treat production: Go get Meat!

I think I will forever be thought of as the "Liver Lady" and Wags' Training Facility will be known (at least to the dogs) as the Place where the Best Cookies in Town can be found. 
So, what's the Secret? What do I put into my training bag and what are the Magic Training treats?

I thought I would share in photos How some of the Amazing Treats are made that many students ask about and marvel over. 

First off - I make almost all of my training "cookies" at home, myself. And while I call them cookies, they are actually not cookies at all but more or less all MEAT. And that's pretty well it - if there is a "Secret" - you just heard it, so you could stop right here :-) Go get Meat! 
I feed my dogs a RAW diet and hand in hand with that seems to have developed a deep desire to really know  the ingredients in their food and treats - and so I've found that this just makes overall sense, as well as being Delicious and very High in value for the dogs.

Whenever possible I get my hands on organ meats and buy those to turn into cookies. Liver (in moderation), heart, kidney and tongue are fantastic and often found at very reasonable prices. Most dogs go absolutely nuts over any and all of these!

In the absence of organ meats - I look for sales in the meat department and have often found that you can get large beef roasts for as little as $8-$10. That's about the same price that you would pay for a bag of commercially prepared treats - which are often full of all kinds of ingredients that you'd never want to put into your own body :-( (so why feed that to our dogs?)
So here we go: here are illustrated steps for becoming a Cookie Factory :-)

This is Heart. By the time I thought of documenting the treat-making process , these pieces had already been through  stage 1: boiling on the stove in water.
And just to be clear - I do the same with a steak, with liver, kidney, tongue...boil first.

After the meat has boiled, I find it easiest to just take a pair of scissors and go to town: cut the  meat  straight onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Here we go now -- a cookie sheet loaded with boiled meat: all cut up and ready to go into the oven to be dried up a bit more. You COULD stop at this stage and just use the treats like this...but they are quite wet and not particularly nice to put into pockets, so that's the reason for continuing to the Oven stage :-)

Here the treats are: after the oven. See the difference? Now they are almost like Jerky, and most people have no issue with sticking these in their pockets.

More of the dried Jerky-type heart cookies. From here I use scissors to cut them even smaller. Green pea-size or just smaller is a good  size reference when you think of how big your Training treats should be.

So there we have it - turning a piece of Fresh meat into Amazing Dogs-Will-Love-Them "Cookies"! Really very easy! 

But WAIT - DON'T STOP THERE: Use the water you boiled the meat in!! This is amazing broth that I use for making Frozen Kongs.

While I just told you I feed my dogs RAW - I do usually have some high quality kibble around. I switch my own dogs to kibble for camping and travel, when having access to a fridge or freezer is very hard, so I do occasionally feed them kibble - and when I make treats (as above) I DO love utilizing that lovely broth that is left in the pot after boiling meat.

What happens while the broth is warm, is that when you pour kibble directly into it - the kibble just soaks up all the broth and completely falls apart - becoming almost a puree...which - when frozen, is a Very cool challenge for the dogs to extract!!!

After boiling your meat; pour kibble right into the broth that is in the pot and let sit  for a few hours.  The  kibble soaks up all the liquid. I've added some oats, a few pieces of the Real meat and other things of "goodness" here as well.

Now - get your Kongs and other stuffable food toys out and ready!

To the left are veggie and fruit mash/mix that normally would be mixed into my dogs' regular meals. This time I decided to add some of it to the kibble-mix that was going into the Kongs.

And VOILA! A collection of food-stuffed Kongs and Busy Buddy-toys ready for the freezer :-) Yes, from here I take this whole pile of Kongs - throw them into a grocery bag to keep the freezer clean and just toss the whole plastic bag in the deep freezer. Then, the next time you want to give your dog "something to do" for a while - pull out a frozen meal: serve frozen! A fantastic thing to have on hand for days when you simply want to keep your dog occupied. 

Easy peasy?! 
Perhaps it goes without saying, but obviously if you haven't taught your dog to eat his meals from food-toys - you need to start with that first BEFORE you start freezing them! If your dog isn't already hooked on the idea of eating his regular food from a food toy like these - it will likely just be very frustrating to him if his food is now also frozen. So - in that case - start with the unfrozen version and just GRADUALLY make the challenge of getting the food out a bit harder! 

Once they are hooked on the idea, though - WOW - is this ever a fun way to serve a meal and a great, great way to keep your dog happily chewing for quite an extended time - as well as send your dog back into his natural roots and origin as a Master Scavenger and Extractor extraordinaire!!

Have FUN with your Treat Factory!!