The Amazing Doggie Treat Thread

[burythehatchet]

last night I slow fried a bunch of bacon, let it harden, crumbled it in a mixer, mixed a tablespoon in with my pooch's dry dog food.

He hasn't stopped licking my toes since.

Damn he's happy!

[auburngrad82]

1. Try baking a sweet potato

Then let it cool, slice it up, and feed it to him. He'll go crazy for it.

Another one is pumpkin (the canned kind, but not pumpkin pie filling because it has sugar). Just put a cup in with his kibble and he'll love you for it. Only 40 calories per cup. We use it to cut back on kibble for on of our dogs who is a little overweight.

[Straight Shooter]

2. Is that your dog? He's got a lot of CHARACTER!

Whatta good-lookin' fella.

Spoil him. Spoil him rotten, rotten, rotten. He deserves it.

[burythehatchet]

3. Thanks I piced him up from the pound as my New Year's

act of kindness. Part lab part afghan. Great temperment.

[Mabus]

6. Try garlic noodles

my dogs love garlic. They go nuts for garlic noodles. I make them for my husband but then hold some back and sprinkle it with extra garlic. I usually mix it with the food. Once in a while I sprinkle the food with a little bit of parmesian cheese. So far the only drawback is being awakened in the middle of the night with garlic-doggy breath.

Both of mine are pound puppies.

[sui generis]

4. it's a slippery slope you know!

my critters are quite sophisticated these days. On Chinese food days the chihuahua and the border collie want my soggy shrimps from the soup.

Fast food hamburger? piece of meat and bun to the cat goddess, and french fries for the canines.

Fried chicken - have to eat it in the pantry

Canned tuna - I have to eat it outside on the porch like I'm . .. .smoking or something.

Then there are the chef nights:

Homemade spaghetti - my beloved old 16 year old great dane levitated off her death bed for it, in fact she may have actually already been dead but decided she suddenly was hungry.

10 hour roast: the worst, they smell it all day and get totally wound up so by dinner time the chihuahua is standing on my head on one leg imitating a Cowboys cheerleader and the other critters are fighting for position under the table.

The good news is - if you give them a little interesting variety in food regularly (don't overdo it) and lots of love and attention they live a long time barring other misfortunes. My old kitty lived to be 21 (and she also ate hamburgers, pickles and all), told you about the great dane, and my black lab until he was 17, and my border collie is almost 18 and still going strong.

[burythehatchet]

5. what a nice picture you paint

the power of affectioin

[Mabus]

7. LOL

Aside from garlic noodles, mine seem to like spicy food.

Chinese food: Kung Pao Chicken

Fast food: hamburgers, hold the onions and especially the pickles.

Indian food: Chicken Tikki Masala

Thai food: Pad Thai, they like it with tofu

Yogurt: One prefers banana/strawberry, the other likes blueberry

Fried food: hashbrowns, I make them from scratch whenever my husband wants them. The dogs will choose my hashbrowns over eggs in any form.

American Indian food: they love both my frybread and my "Indian" soup. I cook the soup for several hours and the smell drives them nuts. They sit in front of the stove waiting for it to be done.

Both of them get excited when the oven/stove timer goes off. They run to wherever I am and herd me to the kitchen with tails wagging.

[sui generis]

9. they are funny!

I forgot about the celebratory pancake, the dogs love pistachios and almonds but no other kind of nuts, one likes bananas, the other one likes apples, everybody loves turkey (I have found my cat partially inside a Thanksgiving dinner carcass left out in the kitchen a bit too long), and the big dogs love raw eggs, even more once they figured out how to get inside them on their own!

Sounds like your babies are as spoiled rotten as mine are -

[seventythree]

13. watch the raw eggs

interferes with B vitamin absorption or something -- I just nuke them first a bit.

[neweurope]

8. It's amazing what animals like... our horses regularly get garlic, apple

vinegar and oil with their other food which I consider to be very healthy. One day I was sitting in a Beer Garden with my horse, had a beer while loosely holding the reins, and the guy at the bench next to mine kept crooning "nice horsey"... I told him to watch his salad and he laughed at me. He was VERY surprised when that big horse head disappeared in his salad bowl all of a sudden...

You have a very beautiful dog!



Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague

[sui generis]

10. horses are very clever about getting apples and crunchy sweet stuff

and I don't care what they say: critters know exactly how to tell a lie. "Really, I swear you haven't given me an apple. What salad?"

[neweurope]

11. LOL. "I'm just a harmless fat little horse and I NEVER broke into the barn

and stole any hay..." exactly. I don't know the problems scientists have with this - every animal owner knows animals can lie.

-------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague

[Mabus]

14. Off topic, an article I got yesterday

in my e-mail. I posted it elsewhere on DU yesterday. The gist is that dogs have been bred for traits that helped them fit in human societies. This explains why they are more adept at communicating to humans than chimps are. I think it probably works for horses as well.

http://www.the-scientist.com/2004/12/20/18/1/printerfri... (requires free registration)

DOGS GET THE POINT

Dogs outperform chimpanzees on several tests that require understanding someone else's point of view – what psychologists call "theory of mind" abilities. Here is a simple and compelling test that any dog owner can easily reproduce. Hide a piece of food in one of two opaque containers. The dog is not permitted to see where the food has been hidden but instead must find the food by following a communicative gesture, such as pointing, by the experimenter.

Brian Hare and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, found that dogs, even puppies brought up at a kennel with minimal human contact, were fully competent at this task. On the other hand, of nine chimpanzees tested, only two showed any success. Wolves performed above chance, but not as well as the dogs.

***snip***
Dogs also appear to understand what people are thinking far more effectively than do chimpanzees. Daniel Povinelli and colleagues at the New Iberia research center in Louisiana gave chimpanzees the choice between begging for food from somebody who could see them, and someone who could not. Surprisingly, chimps showed little understanding that there was no point in begging for food from somebody with a bucket over her head.4 Zsófia Virányi and colleagues replicated this simple test on some Budapest dogs. The dogs were confronted by two unfamiliar women, each holding a liver sandwich. One person faced the dog while the other looked away. Unlike the chimpanzees in Louisiana, Budapest dogs spontaneously begged from only the person who was looking at them.5

[neweurope]

15. Very interesting. Thanks! :)

-------------------

Remember Fallujah!

Bush to The Hague

[Blue Diadem]

12. What a beautiful handsome boy!

I love to hear how other people spoil their babies!