Healthy dog treats equal happy canines

Anyone else have spoiled dogs? Ours have now decided to turn their noses up at any treats that don't come from our kitchen.

The easiest treats of all are liver - just bake or pan fry the stuff until it firms up enough to cut easily, then cut it into small pieces and leave it in an oven at about 200 degrees until the pieces turn crunchy. Our dogs will practically fight each other for one of those, and it makes us feel good to know they aren't getting any preservatives. If you get it good and dry, it will keep, but just to be on the safe side I store it in the freezer.

But do keep an eye on your work - or your dogs - or both.

One night I had baked about 4 pounds of liver and had cut it into the small pieces I mentioned. Not wanting to take the couple hours necessary to dry it right then, I left it on the kitchen counter and forgot to put it away when I went to bed. In the morning there was about a cup full of liver scattered across the floor, next to the empty baking pan.

You know a Border Collie standing on her hind legs can reach pretty far across the counter when there's something really wonderful to steal.

I don't know if the other two helped her eat it or not, but I kind of doubt it, because she was the only one who stunk for the next 3 days. Whew! I couldn't stand to have her in the room!

Knowing how much they love liver, and feeling lazy, last week I was in a pet store and bought a bag of "liver treats." Good thing for me the bag said I could return them if I wasn't satisfied. I didn't taste them, but you know when the dogs spit them out and look at you with that old "What was THAT?" look, they must not have tasted very good.

Our mainstay treats are beef and cheese - I buy inexpensive cuts of roast beef when it's on sale. Then cook it and pulverize the cooked meat in the food processor. After that I cut some chunks of cheese, add some flour so it won't stick together, and pulverize that. Then, a little olive oil and the juice from the roast. After I dump in some whole wheat flour and about a tablespoon of yeast I add water (or beef or chicken) broth to make a mix about the consistency of bread dough.

You can be fancy and roll this out and cut it like cookie dough, but the fast and easy way is to roll chunks into long "ropes" and lay them side by side on a cookie sheet. After the sheet is full, take a long knife and score the tops so the pieces will break apart easily. I usually let the dough raise before baking.

Once I did try just patting the whole mix into the bottom of a cake pan, but it was harder to break the pieces apart after it was baked. I like small pieces so they can have more treats.

Unless your dogs prefer chewie cookies, bake this for an hour or so at about 300 and then turn the oven down to 200 and bake it for a couple more hours - so you get crunchy biscuits without burning them. I like to play it safe, so I also store these in the freezer.

By the way... When we first started making these biscuits I used a recipe - measured ingredients and everything. But you don't need to. The dogs like them just as well if there's more or less cheese, and they like them fine if you toss in some left over pork or hamburger (or steak!) when you're pulverizing the roast. You can even add some veggies if you want. The main thing is to get all the ingredients processed down so you don't have big lumps.

Go bake a biscuit - your dogs will love you for it!