During Sunday’s post when I wrote about the dog’s diet, I mentioned I would share about their night-time treats.
Every night around 9 PM I make myself a snack, it seemed only fair since I was eating, that the dogs should get a treat too.
Delilah took to 9 PM treat time, like a Labrador takes to food, (or large bodies of water.) Needless to say, it’s not possible for you to forget snack time.
Over the years the treats have evolved. What started out as raw hide, changed to twisted pork hide and after watching in horror as Delilah lodged a large piece of pork hide in her mouth, I decided we needed to find a kinder treat.
Since we were trying to help the dogs lose weight, I switched to a lower calorie treat. On occasion I will stuff a Kong with pineapple and yogurt, but lately my go to treat has been the stuffed white bones.
Once upon a time these bones were stuffed with processed cheese or peanut butter.
Now they are washed out every morning and I frost one end with pumpkin and stick it in the freezer. When I get home from work, I fill the rest of the bone and freeze it until snack time.
Most nights the bones are filled with either applesauce or yogurt, but as I mentioned in my Sunday post the place where we buy our raw food has a nutritionist, she prefers something called Kefir. (Sounds like reefer.)
This is like a pre-made smoothy. It’s filled with probiotics and all of the healthy nutrients that come in yogurt, it’s a low fat, low calorie treat that you can feel good about giving to your dog.
Of course, you can always make yourself a treat as well.
I love things that I can make that I can also share with my dogs, is there any particular food that you make that you share with your furry ones?
This is the Tasty Tuesday Blog Hop,
So, do they put themselves to bed after the treat?
It’s funny you should ask, Sampson has always put himself to bed when he is ready. Delilah wants to be with you until you call it quits. 🙂
Woof! Woof! LOVE Frozen Pumpkin. Happy Tasty Tuesday and Golden Thanks for joining our hop. Lots of Golden Woofs, Sugar
And it’s super good for you too Sugar!
My mom is wondering two things, don’t they try to chew up the white bones and doesn’t that filling make a huge mess when they eat it or do they have a special place where they eat it? We like the basic idea.
The white bones are super hard, and sometimes they will just chew the bone, but it’s so hard they can’t get anything off it.
As for the mess, the treat doesn’t usually last long enough to make a mess, but sometimes there is a little mess. Sampson usually eats his on a towel on the bed, while Delilah uses the throw rug in the living room. 🙁 But it’s washable. 🙂
Mmmm. We haven’t tried pumpkin with the dogs, though we keep meaning to. I buy pumpkins and give them to my chickens and ducks. Your dogs must be very happy dogs.
I know what kefir is and I like it but I am not sure how you’re using it to stuff the bones…or am I confused and they’re getting the kefir separately? do you season the pumpkin with anything and is it cooked or just ground up? I’m looking for more ways to add veggies to Giz’s diet and if he’d eat pumpkin that would work for us…he could have the bone to keep him busy while i’m working on the computer
I use canned pumpkin. I frost one end and lay it down in the freezer for a couple of hours, then stand the bone up and pour the Kefir in and stick it in a cup or glass and back in the freezer until it’s hard. You can add bits of fruit to it if you like. 🙂
Silas prefers Kefir to yogurt, in fact. I don’t give him dairy right now because it hasn’t been through the allergy trial, but kefir was always one of his favorites.
I hadn’t thought to buy the flavored kind, instead of plain. Do your dogs like the fruit flavors?
I never would have thought of giving my dog something like this, but why not? Yogurt has proven to be a huge hit and she’ll eat pretty much anything so I might give this a try too. I always feel like I am boring her, giving her the same thing in her Kong every single day. She’s never complained but I’d like to change it up a little, just in case.
Ive given the dogs plenty of yogurt with their kibble, but never kefir We may have to try it
urban hounds
When I saw your title I thought you were feeding Sampson and Delilah lime leaf flavoured treats. Silly me!
We regularly bake offal treats now. No more commercial god-knows-what-goes-into-them liver treats for our princess LOL.
Mmmmmm, we love kefir. I bet it’s great frozen.
You have such great snack ideas. My dogs loved the pumpkin and yogurt filling you introduced me to, but somehow I don’t think they’d go for the fruity yogurt flavor. Still their favorite bonie and Kong stuffer is peanut butter, and yes I love sharing it with them too. I know processed peanut butter is not the healthiest thing for humans but its one of my few vices 🙂
Our dogs are deprived. They get none of that yummy stuff but it sounds yummy. 🙂
I meant to mention that when the email of your post comes in, it says it is from “wordpress.com” rather than your name or your blog’s name. I am sure there is a spot on your dashboard to change that. Sometimes I miss the email because I over look it until I have a chance to wade through all of my email from the day. 🙂
Your dogs should appreciate your hard work to make sure they are getting healthy food. When we snack at night, our dogs get a small taste of whatever we are eating (corn chips, cheese, popcorn, or Leah’s favorite: Ice Cream.) 🙂
Very interesting! So is the Kefir made for dogs or is it a people product?
I tend to be a lazy cook. So my favorite Honey snack is slices of apple.
But when i’m ambitious, I dry slices of sweet potato in the oven. Honey loves them and they’re really cheap.
I LOVE the title of this post. I’m also lazy and use peanut butter since so far none of them has a weight problem.
The kefir is a great idea – I freeze yogurt drops for Kirby and these sound even healthier.
He gets a small snack at bedtime everynight. In fact he has been known to try to hurry me up to go to bed because he wants his treat.
Funny Jodi! I will have to get some of that Kefir madness for Lila. I will have no problem remembering the name because of your witty humor here!
LOL, we have Kefir Madness at Casa de Kolchak too! The humans use it a lot and Koly is always on hand to help us lick up the remnants. I never thought to freeze it into a Kong, we usually do canned pumpkin.