How to make your own doggie treats for the puppy holiday gift exchanges

Aloha everyone! It has been a while because I’ve been working on trying to get a basically failed health coaching practice off the ground. I still enjoy blogging for it, though, even if the hoomans don’t really want health nutrition and lifestyle support. (curious? wellnesswahine.coach on wordpress, and @wellnesswahine.health on IG).

Anyhoo, it is that time of the year again where the gift and cookie exchanges have commenced. If you would like to make your own DIY doggie treats this pawliday to give to your pooch palz, here’s how we learned it could be done.

THREE OPTIONS

• Kibble base. if it’s for your own dog, no joke, grind up their own kibble into a powder using a food processor or ziplock + rolling pin, add enough water or organic coconut water to form a dough. Then stir in whatever add-ins you want, shape, and bake for about 10 minutes. This is our default “recipe”.
• Almond flour-egg base. If you are baking the treats for others, go for an almond flour-egg base. This is what they use here for Hawai’i’s infamous dog cookies by Dogtown Bakery human-food grade dog biscuits. Instead of paying $14 a bag, we just make them ourselves at home now. We even have the exact same pineapple cookie plunger at our house, which you can find on Amazon. Just please let your recipients know what the ingredients are, because some dogs cannot eat eggs or nuts. And all things in moderation– dogs aren’t squirrels. They aren’t supposed to be eating a ton of almond flour.

• Chicken flour base. Dude. I bet you didn’t know that it’s crazy easy to make flour out of chicken. Yes, chicken flour.
• whatever other natural base ingredients you prefer. I take inspiration from Blue Buffalo, which adds meats, oatmeal, brown rice, potatoes (Nalu loves purple sweet potatoes and other ‘uala), flax, and fish oil to their dog treats. If I buy commercial dog treats, it’s either single-ingredient treats, or blue buffalo. Some dogs can also tolerate buckwheat/ kasha flour.

Then add your add-ins

• coconut, peanut butter, fresh cranberries, fresh blueberries, flax seed/ flax seed meal, dried sweet potato chunks (Costco now makes just dried sweet potato in packs–Nalu loves it), dried pineapple, crumbled bacon, bone broth, sardines, coconut water, mint, parsley, and raw patty crumbles. Our favorite raw patties are by Stella & Chewy (surf and turf flavor, to be exact).