Soft (Flour-Free) Salmon & Tuna Dog Treats

            So as you know, I love my dogs - and I love my dogs to eat healthy. Sometimes I think they actually eat better than we do - they are fed a high quality grain-free dog food and they don't get too much "human food" - when they do it's good for them, such as apples, sweet potatoes and carrots. I also like them to eat healthy treats - especially since we train so much (an hour each week in agility and then -unknown- amount of time training at home). Up until now, we've always bought their treats from the local pet stores - at a hefty price, of course. Pure liver bites etc aren't cheap, for some reason (on a side note: I always find it so funny, the fewer "ingredients" something contains, the more expensive it seems to be - both for dogs and humans). Since we're a family of a tight budget, I've decided to take on my "make whatever we can to minimize our expenses" mindset to dog treats as well. I needed something quick and soft, that I can cube up, throw into baggies and freeze. I also didn't want to use flour. Flour is a "bad" carbohydrate (not normally found in most carnivore's diet) and can contribute to obesity/other health issues in dogs but not all carbohydrates are bad! Oats are known as "healthy" carbohydrates as they don't cause a dogs blood glucose to rise and fall rapidly. So with all that said, here are the treats I made:

 

These treats are very easy to make, probably took me about 5 minutes to whip up and put in the oven.

 

I did one "loaf" with salmon and one with tuna. 

Ingredients

 5 1/2 tbsp. oats, pulsed in a food processor

2x 150-170g can of salmon or tuna (in water)

1 egg* 

1/4 tsp. garlic powder

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350F. Pulse the oats in a food processor until ground up - about the texture pictured here:

2. Pour the oats into a mixing bowl.

3. Pour the one can of the salmon/tuna AND the water from the can (this is very important) into the food processor, and pulse until incorporated. 

4. Put this mixture into the bowl with the oats. 

5. Open up the second can of salmon/tuna and pour the water from this into the mixture of oats and pureed salmon/tuna. Then place the remaining salmon/tuna into the food processor and blend up again. Place all this into the bowl with the oats and salmon/tuna puree.

6. Add the egg.**After making this for the first time, I think I will add another egg to bind this all together a little better - once I've tried it I'll let you know how to works out**

7. Add the garlic powder, mix everything together. 

8. Shape the mixture into logs on a greased baking sheet. I did one "loaf" of each - one salmon and one tuna as pictured below.

9. Put in the oven for about 40-45 minutes. 

10. Slice up like I did above and watch the dogs go nuts for it!

              My two truly loved these. We used them for agility on Monday and they went crazy for them. They smell disgusting, just a warning. But the stinkier, the better in a dogs world. Let me know what your dogs think!

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