Homemade Dog Treats

These super easy 3 ingredient homemade dog treats are made with simple ingredients that your dog or puppy will love. For a gluten free version of this recipe swap out the wheat flour with oat flour.

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Your dog will love these easy treats

Today I'm going to do something a little different. I'm going to share a homemade dog treat recipe. Why? Because they are so easy and my dog (Sadie, but we call her Puppy mostly) literally goes crazy over them. You'll see in the photos..

These dog treats, or puppy cookies as we call them, require only three ingredients and prep is pretty easy.

Ingredients you need

• Mashed Sweet Potato: I boil a sweet potato and usually only need about half of it, mashed up. Don't add anything to it.
• Peanut Butter: Simple store-bought peanut is what I use
• Flour: All-purpose flour is fine, check below for subsitutions

Ingredient Substitutions

• Mashed Sweet Potato: I'm sure you could use pumpkin puree although I have not tried it
• Peanut Butter: Not sure of any substitution for this because it's what holds this dough together. Make sure your peanut butter does not contain Xylitol as this is toxic for dogs.
• Flour: I've used oat flour in these photos. I've made this recipe probably about 50 times and in that time I've used regular all-purpose flour which works great and I've also used homemade oat flour. Why? Because my mom used to have a sweet little puppy named Teddy who was gluten intolerant - it made him itch like crazy. If your dog is also, try oat flour! You can buy oat flour or simply blend oats in a food processor (make sure they are certified gluten free if you need to).

About these ingredients

The three ingredients in this recipe are safe for human consumption. I have fed these treats to my dog and my moms dogs for years and they all love them and never had any stomach upset with them.

Do your own research and consult with your dog's veterinarian about possible allergies or intolerances your dog may have before feeding them these treats.

I've done my own research and have a few articles to share regarding these ingredients and dogs.

Sweet Potatoes: Most of the articles I've read suggest sweet potatoes are safe although they should always be cooked before feeding and shouldn't be the main ingredient in your dog's diet. I feed my dog one of these cookies a day. This article from RedBarn (a pet food producer) says sweet potatoes are a good source of essential vitamins such as B6, C, and A. Purina says canned pumpkin is safe for dogs and can even help with stomach upset. You could try substituting the sweet potato mash for pumpkin puree.

Peanut Butter: The American Kennel Association says peanut butter can be a part of a dog's diet although they recommend peanut butter that is unsalted or natural and never containing Xylitol which is toxic for dogs.

Wheat flour/Oat flour: The American Kennel Association says grains can be healthy for dogs. If your dog has an allergy to wheat try oat flour as long as your oats are certified to be gluten-free (sometimes they are grown next to wheat or processed in the same plant as wheat.)

Let's Make Puppy Cookies

For these dogs treats, you'll need to do some prep or buy already mashed sweet potato if that's available in your store. If not, peel, chop, boil and mash one sweet potato, and then measure out half a cup for this recipe.

Measure half a cup of peanut butter also. And a cup and a half or so of flour (all-purpose or oat).

See... Puppy knows I'm making them because she can smell the familiar ingredients. She sat and watched the entire time.

Simply mix all three ingredients together. It takes a while to get it all combined but it will come together. I use a spatula for this.

What is the texture and consistency of the dough?

The dough should be rather soft like cookie dough, not stretchy and thick like bread dough but it shouldn't be overly sticky. It will be somewhat sticky though and will take extra flour to roll it out so that it doesn't stick to your surface or your rolling pin.

Roll the dough out. I do this right on a silicone mat. You can also roll it on parchment paper.

Once it's rolled out pretty thin you can cut it. I roll it about ⅛ inch thick, which is approximately the thickness of two stacked quarters.

To cut squares, I take my bench scraper and press lines in (carefully if I'm working on top of my silicone mat - you don't want to cut into it). I press lines horizontally and vertically to make square dog treats. Doing this makes this recipe super easy.

I press holes in each cookie, mainly for decoration but it also helps prevent bubbles from forming in the dough.

You can also use any shaped cookie cutter to cut treats. A dog bone-shaped cookie cutter makes super adorable treats but it takes a long time and this dough is kind of soft so it can take a long time to move the cookies over.

If I'm using a cookie cutter, I usually just press the shapes into the dough on the Silpat and then remove the surrounding extra dough so that I don't have to move each cookie. Reroll the leftover dough and press more cookies until you use all the dough. You may have to bake in batches.

Make them however you want though! I promise you Puppy doesn't notice if they are square or bone-shaped, she just wants to keep shaking a paw to get more of them. You can see this below.

Tips and Tricks

Use cute, shaped cookie cutters and give these treats as gifts to your favorite puppy friends! Slip them into a plastic bag and tie with a ribbon.

Or add some to a glass jar and gift the whole thing to a friend and their dog for a cute gift.

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