Dog-Gone Delicious

Our black lab, Pipa (named after Regis’ nickname for Kelly Ripa, for all you morning TV fans), is like a child to us. She is a shelter rescue, and we really don’t know how old she is. She was found wandering around the side of I-90 with another lab who was believed to be her daughter; someone had just abandoned them to fend for themselves. As a side note, we checked up on the other dog not long after we brought Pipa home, and she had been adopted as well. As a second side note, I can’t believe anyone would just abandon two dogs on the side of the freeway.

While our bossy 10-year-old cat, Bugsy, is undoubtedly the queen of this castle, Pipa is very much the princess, and gets treated that way. I adopted Bugsy when she was just six weeks old, so she’s always had a sheltered life, but we don’t know about Pipa’s mysterious past.

What we do know is that we have made up for whatever happened to her in her past, as the Pipster’s got it good now. She rides around town with 2Chili everywhere he goes, which means he pretty much always ends up at a dog park, no matter what he set out to do. She sleeps in a king-sized bed in a room all to herself, and 2Chili tucks her into bed each night. Pipa loves to “cook” because often little goodies fall to the floor on accident.

When I found a blog dedicated to dog treat recipes and other dog-related content, well, that was one that went straight into my RSS reader.

Pipa loves fruit and veggies, with her favorites being apples, pears, bananas, and carrots, so the first recipe I tried is the Honey Banana Squirrels. I don’t have a squirrel cookie cutter, but our friends at Amazon Fresh put a radish cookie cutter in our grocery order recently, so, Pipa got Honey Banana Radishes.

Oh, and, She. LOVED. Them. Thank you, Doggy Dessert Chef!

This picture to the right is Pipa patiently asking for the Honey Banana Radish.2Chili noted he has never seen her wag her tail so much while eating a treat.

The recipe made a lot, so I froze most of them and put 5 into a Ziploc baggie for doling out over the course of the next week. And, I love that the ingredients are things that we eat as humans: bananas, honey, whole wheat flour, and milk. That’s it.

Honey Banana Dog Treats

Original Recipe: Honey Banana Squirrels

Time Required:

• 10 minutes to mix and cut the dough
• 15 minutes to cook

Skill Level (out of 5): 

2Chili’s  Pipa’s Taster Rating (out of 5): 

(She’s not good with numbers, but absolutely went crazy for these. Ironically, 2Chili liked them too – he thought they were basically a banana cookie. Serve the man a fancy dinner, and I get 2 stars, but a dog treat gets 5. Go figure.)

Instructions:

I didn’t change anything about the original recipe, so you should head over to Doggy Dessert Chef to grab the recipe, as well as others.

The Verdict:

The were super easy to make, and I like the idea of making healthy dog treats instead of giving Pipa processed treats with questionable ingredients. I can’t wait to try other recipes! And, even 2Chili got excited about this one and asked if he can make the next batch. Success!