Santa Paws: Homemade Treats For Your Furry Friends

Santa Paws Is Coming: Homemade Treats for Your Furry Friends

Those little paw-shaped holiday stockings are cute, but you have to fill them, too. Why not give your pets, or your friends’ pets, the gift of health with homemade dog and cat treats. Making your own healthy treats for dogs and cats means learning which recipes are fuss-free, odor-free and stay fresh for a couple of weeks. Quick tip: for dogs, use peanut butter without the sweetener xylitol, but avoid giving any peanut butter to cats , as it may result in stomach problems. For more information on what other foods to avoid giving pets, check out the ASPCA’s list.

1. Tuna Puffs for Cats: If you make treats with tuna just the right way, they won’t smell fishy. Plus, they last for a few weeks when stored in a sealed-tight jar. Use a soda bottle cap as a cookie-cutter for these treats. Here’s the cat treat recipes:

Ingredients:

• 1 can tuna in oil (drained)
• 1 egg
• 1 ¼ cups of flour (which is fine for cats)
• ½ cup of water
• A couple of dashes of dried catnip

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix all ingredients in a food processor to create a dough. Add dash of flour if dough is too sticky. Dust a surface, roll out dough to less than an inch thick and use the cap to cut out the cookies (around 50) from the dough. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Bake treats for 20 minutes and watch them puff while cooking.

2. The Healthiest Dried Sweet Potato Dog Chews: What better gift than a dog treat recipe without flour? Here’s a one-ingredient dog chew that takes no time to prep. All you have to do, besides finding a decorative jar and ribbon for gift-giving, is grab a few sweet potatoes. Here's the recipe:

• Slice about three sweet potatoes lengthwise (about 1/3 inch thick).
• Line baking sheet with parchment paper.
• Put oven on 200 degrees for six hours for serious chew. Flip slices half-way through.
• Keep chews in oven after it’s turned off for extra chew.

Three potatoes make a good size gift for one dog. Potato chews will stay good in a sealed container up to two weeks.

3. Salmon Bites for Cats: No cat can turn its back on salmon. For the finicky feline in your life, make this healthy three-ingredient recipe : Process a can of undrained salmon, 1 egg and 2 cups of whole wheat flour into a dough. Add water if too dry. Roll out the dough to about ¼ inch thick. Use a small cookie cutter to make about 50 treats. Bake on lined cookie sheet at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. Cool and wrap it up.

For more ideas and inspiration, head over to Food Lion’s blog for Crunchy Peanut Butter Bites, a classic, tasty homemade dog treat made from peanut butter.