Critter Kitchen: Frozen Pumpkin Dog Treats

Happy Mother's Day! And keep those furry four-legged family members cool during the summer with these easy, no cook, dog treats!

First off, a huge Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms, stepmoms, pseudo-moms, and every amazing maternal figure out there! Special shoutout to our incredible Christine, Paula, Ginny, Beccy, and all our wonderful mother friends who juggle more. You multitask like superheroes - so this weekend, take a deep breath, kick back, and give yourself a well-deserved break from the chaos known as raising a family. Being a mother is tough. Being a true mom, whether you birthed the kids or not, is just amazing.

As it is Mother’s Day, I would love to hear any wonderful mother stories people would like to share about any maternal figure that helped you through a hard time.

For us, life is busy right now. I making a promise to try to reach out to my people more often. It is start to get hot and it is only May, but then it is Houston. I often wonder how people like my husband can put up with the heat, and the answer is to mainly remain inside, but we can’t do that with the dogs. Staying inside all the time isn’t fun for them, or for us. So, we have come up with creative ways to keep them cool. Of course, a small dog pool in the back yard, might be helpful (hint, hint, Tod.) (Huh? -Tod) But until then, I am looking at frozen treats.

After all, I like a good popsicle. I have done recipes on this blog for a few different frozen human treats, including lemon bars, and frozen s’mores. But dogs get hot too and most of those would be pretty unhealthy for them. And as I don’t have kids, I guess that means I get to spoil my puppies instead.

So, I figured while the summer (and yes, I do think May is Houston counts as the start of summer) temperatures are starting to rise us. I might as well provide a frozen treat!

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Recipe: Pumpkin Yogurt Dog Treats

Warning: Make sure any canned pumpkin you used is “canned pureed pumpkin” not “canned pumpkin pie mix”. The sugars AND spices in such are really bad for dogs as it has nutmeg in it which is toxic to dog.

Warning: For the pureed raw beef liver, get it from a good butcher and make sure it is clean and has no salts added.

Ingredients

1 cup of plain yogurt

1 cup of pumpkin puree

*optional (1/2 cup of pureed raw beef liver) - but come on your pup will love you for it.

Directions

Mix pumpkin, yogurt, and offal together in a bowl.

Put mixture into ice trays or cookie molds. I like using ones with dog bones so we know who the treats are for. Not that it will stop Tod from tasting them. (The offal might, but I didn’t use it this time…)

Freeze for 24 hours.

Pop the treats out the mold into baggies and back into the freezer for storage.

These will make great teething cold treats or treats for a hot summer day.

If you want if you want you can add a tiny bit (1/16 teaspoon) of cinnamon. But… I like to keep them pretty basic. And a shout out to Teresa (Dante’s first human mom) that sent me the a version of this to try.

Dante can’t handle milk so we used coconut yogurt, But you have to be really careful if you are using non-dairy yogurt and read ALL of the ingredient. Dogs don’t process sugars and really don’t process “fake” sugars like we do.

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Chaos Tip of the Week

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just remember: somewhere out there, a squirrel is probably watching you, judging your life choices, and plotting to steal your popsicle. After all, they are evil and are plotting their supremacy.

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Critter’s Weekly Question

What other ingredients, besides adding raw livers to the Dog Treats, might keep Tod’s hands out the puppy treat jar? Anyone have suggestions?