Our Terrier-Poodle mix, Bodhi, had food-allergies so bad he developed hot spots. These areas would itch so much he would lick them raw. So we took him to our vet and he was put on prescription dog food, Royal Canin HP. Since using Royal Canin HP, his fur has grown back and his coat is back to normal and the itch that was driving him crazy is gone.
Unfortunately, this and similar veterinary-diet dog treats are always out-of-stock. So I decided to make my own from the veterinary-diet canned dog foods. The dermatologist recommends I stick to prescription canned dog foods only because of their stricter manufacturing guidelines. But I’ve supplemented with regular cans of Evangers Rabbit, Instinct Rabbit and Natures Choice Venison. These are not made under the strict veterinary dietary guidelines so could have ‘contaminants’. But so far, the mix combining Royal Canin HP canned food with rabbit has not caused the hot spots to return or the itching.
Favorite Method
I’ve experimented with several techniques to improve and streamline the process of baking dog treats. My current method is fairly fast, less tedious than earlier methods, and has great results. Using a 25mm/0.5tbs ice cream scoop is very good at producing professional looking dog treats but takes a lot of time and is tedious. My latest tool is a jerky gun and, so far, it works the best at making dog treat bites and buttons quickly.
Step 1: mix the canned dog food in a large bowl into mush. Two cans of vet-diet Royal Canin HP (Hills Science Z/D &/or Purina Pro HA) are grated into a large bowl. Two cans of Evangers or Instinct Rabbit are added and mixed till smooth by hand. The canned rabbit dog food is much softer than the vet-diet. If you are concerned about non-prescription food quality, you can stick to strictly using vet-diet canned food. But novel proteins such as rabbit, alligator or venison are not supposed to trigger an allergic response.
I use a grater to shred the clumps of dog food so it can be extruded by the jerky gun. The smoother the mix, the smoother the strips will extrude from the tip(s). Be sure to break-up any chunks between your fingers. Wearing gloves is helpful so you can knead the mix until smooth.
Step 2: load the jerky gun with the mix – the less air the better so shake the mix down into the tube. Once filled, select the extrusion tip, I prefer the large sausage-filler tip which extrudes a cylindrical 1″ diameter ‘log’. With rabbit or venison added, the mix can be pretty soft so after dispensing several logs onto a cookie sheet. I chill them for ~30mins in the freezer or an hour in the fridge. This results in a cookie-dough texture that can be cut cleanly with a long knife. Note: this changes as the logs warm, so I try to cut several logs at once to speed the process.
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Step 3: slice the logs into 1/2″x1″ buttons. I cut four logs at the same time with a butchers knife. Then space the buttons out onto a large cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. The buttons will usually shrink when baking but if there is more rabbit (more fat), they may spread. If you have this problem then adjust your mix or space your buttons further apart.
Alternately – use the double-barrel jerky extrusion tip: form two continuous thick strips of dog food jerky onto the large cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Then using the tip of a butter knife, cut into/notch the strips every 1″. This is the quickest way to make bite-size squares but I prefer the round crispier buttons. These are easier to throw if you want to play a treat-fetching game.
Step 4: any dog food remnants are put in the 25mm scoop and dolloped onto the cookie sheet. Once all of the dog food mix is expelled onto the cookie sheet, scrap the extrusion tip(s) & bowl clean and use remnants to fill the scoop. Or you use a spoon or fingers to form buttons with the leftovers.
Step 5: bake for 30mins at 300°: I use a convection oven but a regular oven works just as well. Bake for 30mins, let cool for ~30mins, place an empty parchment paper-lined cookie sheet on top of the baked treats, then flip the entire cookie sheet in one motion. This saves you from having to flip each treat individually by hand. Peel any stuck treats off the old sheet and onto the new paper-sheet (see photos below). Be sure all the treats are flipped so the less-cooked surface is up. Bake another 30mins at 300° then cool – I leave the cookie sheets in the oven so they cook/dry a little longer while cooling. But be sure to crack the oven door open so the steam escapes. Or just remove from the oven to cool.
Step 6: Storage (optional) – I place the baked treats into a chest freezer for storage then defrost a batch in the fridge before using. If baked well, these treats do not need to be refrigerated or frozen but I do both. I store them uncovered in the freezer then move portions into the fridge to thaw & use. My hope is freezing may do some freeze-drying of the treats and keep them crisp. Some thicker baked pieces still have soft chewy middles so refrigeration/freezing helps maintains freshness. Not a big concern since most batches are consumed in one week.
Different Things I’ve Tried
Method 1 (Simplest): Just cut the canned food into cubes and bake – see 1st photo below.
For the first few batches of dog treats, I only used prescription canned dog food: Hills Science Z/D, Royal Canin HP & Purina Pro HA. I wanted to try the different brands to see if one worked better or if Bodhi preferred of one over another. There was no obvious preference – Bodhi loved all of the treats equally. I think baking the dog food concentrates the flavor, smell & adds crunch.
Since all the vet-diet canned foods have a solid pâté texture. Once out of the can, I just sliced the block into cubes about 3/4″x1/2″x1/2″. I baked these on a cookie sheet in a convection oven at 300° for 30mins. I noticed the undersides were oily and still soft. So, after letting them cool slightly, I flipped each cube and baked for another 30min at 300°.
These cube-shaped treats turned out pretty good but were not easy to throw very far for ‘treat-hunt’, our treat-finding game. Plus this process takes a long time & flipping each treat is tedious.
I thought a confectioner scoop might speed up the process. After a short search on Amazon for confectioner & ice cream scoops, I ordered this 25mm (0.5 tbs) scoop.
Method 2: Combination of cubes and scooped treats. Some canned dog food will plop out of the can whole (Z/D), some won’t (HP or HA). I tried punching a few holes in the bottom of the can to break the vacuum & release the content. It helped but it was still a lot of work to extract the contents whole or in big blocks. On flat bottom cans, you can open both ends and push out the entire can’s contents. The bottom of these cans all had rounded edges so that method wasn’t possible.
I resorted to slicing the loaf in the can with a knife then prying out the chunks. The larger chunks were cubed then placed on a cookie sheet. The rest were pressed into a melon baller or 25mm ice-cream scoop to form round dog treats. The 25mm scoop is the perfect size but it’s a lot of work, making one treat at a time.
Tip – Adding parchment paper makes flipping & clean-up easier.
The trimmings and leftover dog food were pressed into the scoop and dropped onto the cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. The 25mm (0.5 tbs) scoop dollop is the perfect size, shrinking as it bakes into a perfect bite-size treat. Convection baking at 300° for 30mins, letting cool, flipping, then baking another 30mins at 300° resulted in a great batch. The 25mm scoop treats were shaped & baked near-perfect. I flattened them slightly with a spoon since they are dome-shaped out of the scoop. But this isn’t really necessary since they naturally flatten when baking. The melon-ball tool can also be used but getting the mix to drop onto the cookie sheet requires a ton effort unless using only the softer canned rabbit.
Method 3: Combining all the techniques tried so far, I used the single large tip to make button logs, chill and cut; then switch to the dual jerky tip & made continuous thin jerky strips. Jerky strips tend to crumble when breaking into piece so are a little more messy. But the fastest & easiest batch of treats would be twice-baked jerky strips.
Update – Silicone Molds: my wife brought home a silicone mold from World Market shaped with paw-prints. One sheet of 18 pieces would be inefficient so I browsed Amazon and found a variety of similar molds. For Christmas dog treat bags, I made a batch of various paw-print and round molded treats. I tried 350° for 30mins since these molds were thicker and would insulate the mix while baking. I then extracted them from the mold onto parchment-lined cookie sheets for the 2nd bake – 40mins at 300°. They turned out well although some food stuck to the mold on roughly 5% of the pieces. I did not photograph this trial but using molds may be the fastest method yet.
- Mix the mash in a bowl
- Load the molds with a spatula – packing the mix into each cell then scrapping each cell flat
- Arrange the filled molds onto a large cookie sheet (no parchment) and bake 350° for 30mins
- Let cool then drop each treat onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake again at 300° for 40mins
The top of the treats bake nice and crispy in the molds but the bottoms are oily and can stick. They need the 2nd bake much more than non-mold methods. Provided you are not too particular about how well the treats take the molded shape, the process is very quick.
The silicone mold with 1″ by 1/2″ deep paw-prints turned out the best in terms of size & crispness. But the paw design was lost except for the outline.