Brutus Bites: Pumpkin Dog Cookies

Brutus, my beloved yorkie, is a fan of my baking.

We didn't discover this on purpose, as we try to not give Brutus food scraps, especially from the table. We discovered his love for snickerdoodles after he stole one right out of Chris' hand, and we discovered his love of cream-cheese frosting after he went nuts from the smell when I made the whoopie pies (he didn't get any whoopie pie, only the frosting).

As I said, we don't generally give Brutus any people-food, so I thought I'd let him in on some of the holiday baking action by making a special batch of cookies just for him.

I found this recipe online at http://www.all-natural-dog-treat.com/dogtreatrecipe.html. Its easy, only has three ingredients, and is very healthy.

Pumpkin Dog Cookies

Ingredients:

One 15 oz. can mashed pure pumpkin (NOT the spiced pie filling)

3/4 cup cream of wheat (or rice cereal if wheat-sensitive) You can mix this dry--no need to cook it first

1/2 cup dry powdered milk 

Directions: Preheat oven to 300 F. 

Mix all ingredients together. Drop small spoonfuls (I use about a tablespoon) onto a lightly greased cookie sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 15-20 minutes. After I dropped them on the cookie sheet I flattened them with a damp finger. Monogram is optional.

If you'd like to make bite sized cookies for small dogs, training rewards or just small treats, you can use a pastry bag and squeeze out rosettes about the size of a dime for tasty bite sized cookies!

Keep in mind, these cookies are dense and don't spread, so how they look before they go in the oven is how they look when they're done.

Depending on the size, this recipe will make around 20 treats. 

Humans can eat these as well, but they don't have much flavor (I tried them).

The long one is because I didn't want to use a third cookie sheet for only 1 or 2 cookies

Brutus loves these cookies and thinks you should make them for your favorite puppy!