D is for Dog Treats

My Bee loves animals.   It doesn't really matter what sort.  Yesterday she spent nearly an hour cuddling a bearded dragon (her cousin's pet) inside her jacket to warm it up.  Bee would dearly love a cat which will have to wait until we move to a larger place.  And the second thing she wants to do on arrival at her Aunty and Uncle's place is to feed the chooks, cows, lizards, birds and fish.

What's the first thing Bee wants to do at her Aunt's place I hear you ask.  Play with their Maltese cross puppy dog, Poppy.  Even though we have a pet dog (a Terrier cross called JJ) which she loves, Bee absolutely adores Poppy dog.  I can see the attraction.  Poppy is small, white, fluffy and cuddly.  Much to Bee's constant consternation though, Poppy is not a lap dog.  Our JJ is more of a lap dog but is a little too big at the moment for the girls' laps.  However,  even though Poppy doesn't like a lot of cuddles Bee still loves spending time with her.

Bee and Poppy

After our last visit to Poppy's house, Bee was upset during the car ride home.  When I asked her what was wrong, Bee replied "I miss Poppy".  So I suggested we make some special homemade dog treats to take to Poppy next time we visited. 

Bee cheered up with that suggestion and after some google research we found these recipes for Homemade Dog Treats over on My Baking Addiction. 

We decided on the Peanut Butter Pumpkin Dog Treats mainly because I had all the ingredients we needed.  It was a good choice too.  Poppy goes nuts for these treats.  Our dog JJ does too. Bee was happy to share them between the two dogs and we have since made another batch for them to share.

To get the full recipe for Peanut Butter Pumpkin Dog Treats head over to My Baking Addiction.  The only change I made was to use plain flour rather than whole wheat flour as that is what we had.  We made about 40 small treats using small cookie cutters.  Even though US and Australian measuring cups differ in size I used my regular measuring set and the end result was fine.  The oven temperature converts to 180 degrees Celsius. 

Bee mixing the flour, oats and cinnamon.

Bear mixing the pumpkin, eggs and peanut butter.

Mixing it all together. Yes that is pumpkin on your arm!

Kneading the dough a little.

Bee chose to use butterfly, dog and bone biscuit cutters.

Bear chose bat, snowman and cat biscuit cutters.

Ready to bake.

Fresh from the oven.

We store our dog treats in a container in the fridge and they last as long as they need to (ie. not very long as both Bee and Bear love feeding them to the dogs and the dogs love to help out!).