15 October 2011

Dog cookies

Today, the weather is miserable - cold, wet, rainy and windy. A good day for baking. Since I was almost out of dog cookies, I decided to bake some. This is the second batch I made up this week. Unfortunately 1/3 of the cookies got burned in the first batch when I set the oven at the wrong setting. (Our 23 year old, convection oven is very iffy and we do need a new one.)


As you can imagine, 3 1/3 Vizslas (the 1/3 Vizsla is the 5-month old puppy from our last litter) in the house eat a lot of cookies and now that I am on retired and on a pension, buying dog cookies for a multiple-dog household is expensive. Well, just about everything dog-related is expensive but that's a subject for another Blog post. I usually buy large sizes when purchasing cookies from a dog store but even then, it costs a small fortune. When I calculate the cost of the ingredients I use to make a large batch of cookies, it's probably less than $3.00 in total.

And then there is the time to make them. Creating this batch above took less than 1 hr. Rolling out the dough and cutting the cookies take the longest. I sometimes use a bone-shaped cookie cutter but that really adds to the time so this week, I cut the dough in strips and then cut 2-3 strips at a time into large bite pieces. This really sped up the process. My dogs don't care what shape the cookies are after all. Yummm!!

This morning's recipe made up 4 trays of cookies (exactly 234 cookies). To pay for this quantity in the store would likely cost me $15.00 or more (I am talking about a good quality cookie, not the cheap ones with by-products and other yucky stuff).  Two hundred thirty-four cookies between 3.33 dogs will last about 7 days in our household.  Not long!  I can see I am getting myself into a weekly activity!!

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2 comments:

  1. After talking to you a few weeks back, Dexter & Jersey now get kibble as treats. It's cheaper, healthier (since each kibble bit is 1 or 2 calories) and the dogs don't care about the size of the treat.

    You need to share the recipe of those cookies that you just made. I'm always looking for a good dog treat recipe.

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  2. I don't use cookies for training treats. They are rewards for going into their crates anytime we go out or at bedtime. And because Hubs is a big tea & cookie person, whenever he has tea & cookies, the dogs have to have their cookies too! It's amazing how the dogs know when this is happening!

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