The day when I decided to save up on everything was the day I decided to bake dog treats.

Dog lovers may relate that dog food is more expensive than rice and dog treats can cost more than three budget meals. (Case in point, a kilo of the 'cheapest' dog food these days is P50, while you can buy high quality rice for more than P40 per kilo.) If your dog has a special diet of one canned dog food a day, then in a week, you can probably convert it to a very delicious bowl of ramen in Manila.

Thanks to the Web, I've discovered several recipes to make dog treats. My initial peg was the pedigree cookie treats and the generic cookie treats in the market. So when I saw a recipe on basic dog biscuits from www.cesarsway.com, I knew I had to try it.



If you have whole wheat flour, good for you. If not, regular flour can work as well. I used a tiny bit of boullion cube for the flavoring and based from my pet dogs' saliva drip as they stare at the treat, they love it.

Here's the recipe from www.cesarsway.com:

INGREDIENTS

• 2.5 cups of whole wheat flour or regular all purpose flour (for me, I mixed whole wheat and regular flour)
• 1 tsp Bouillion cube or Knorr beef/chicken cube. I used 1/4 of the cube
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 1 tsp salt (I omitted this since I used Bouillion cubes. You can omit it too)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Set your oven to 350 degrees. Preheat for several minutes.
2. Boil hot water and dissolve the Bouillion/Knorr cube. If you just boiled the water, it's best to wait for a bit for it to cool. It would be hard to knead it when the water is scalding hot. 
3. Add the mixture to the flour. Use a spatula to mix it then knead it by hand. If you have a dough hook and a KitchenAid, then good for you - use it.
4. Knead for several minutes then rest before rolling it. 
5. Divide the dough and use a rolling pin to flatten the dough. Flatten it until it's half an inch thick. Sometimes if I'm lazy, I leave it a little thicker than half an inch.
6. Cut it into your favorite shapes or if you're practical like me, I cut it into strips.
7. Line onto a pan and bake for 30 minutes.

Ta-daaaan! Then you have dog treats for training and for rewarding your pet dogs. You have to keep it refrigerated especially during hot summer days. I experienced seeing blue molds and I ended up throwing the whole batch. Sniff.

Hope your pets enjoy the treats!