Party at Lucca's!

Lots of things to celebrate in May! And Mom's birthday isn't even here yet! Today was our little puppy dog's FIRST birthday! I can't believe our little tiny puppy is 1 year old - but time flies and she now most certainly is.

Remember this little thing??

And now, what a big girl! All 62 pounds of her!!

It's a perfect week to be celebrating Little Lucca's birthday. We're dog-sitting her buddy/boyfriend, Carter the Bernese Mountain Dog right now. And since Lucca's absolute favorite thing to do is play with other doggies - how perfect that she had a constant playmate today!

Carter and Lucca enjoy some cow hooves together

Lucca and Carter first meet in their puppy class
(Lucca is 8 weeks old)!

In addition to playing with her best bud, Lucca also got to go play at the dog park, take some nice long naps (what else is new?) AND eat homemade doggie cookies!!

Almost good enough to eat!

What else would a bake-o-holic Dog Mom do on her puppy's birthday? I made doggie cookies! Remember when I got on my soapbox and ranted about what you should be feeding your dog(s)? It's for that reason that it can be so satisfying making your own doggie treats at home. You know exactly what goes into them and you can do your own research to find out what will/won't be good for your best 4-legged friend. And let's face it - you can't mess up flavor since dogs will eat anything!

I'm getting so old... must drown my sorrows...

Most people aren't aware that dogs don't really process grains. Wheat, oats, rice - they don't do anything for your dog. The best diet is raw meat and bones -- but since those don't make for the simplest of treats, I still buy Lucca treats made with grains. And therefore I don't mind making treats with a bit of grains too.

I did some web searching before finding this site. I thought about doing the peanut butter treats, but then changed my mind for something more "meaty" and made some slight variations of the Tuna Training Treats...which I'm renaming Garlic Tuna & Salmon Cookies.

Lucca's Garlic Tuna & Salmon Cookies:
Made about 28 cookies

2-6 oz cans of tuna with water (I used 1 tuna and 1 salmon)
2 eggs
2 cups wheat flour
1 T garlic powder
Parmesan cheese to sprinkle

Pour the 2 cans of tuna with all the water into your food processor. Pulse it until it's smooth. Add in the eggs and pulse again. **note: you could probably easily replace the fish with canned chicken or even raw livers with some liquid - it'd really work with any meat/protein!**

1 can tuna, 1 can salmon -- Blend together until smooth

Pulse in 2 eggs

[At this point, I poured the mixture into a bowl to add the flour but you could probably pulse the flour in also.] Pour the mixture into a bowl and stir in the flour and garlic powder, adding the flour gradually or it might be too difficult to stir. The dough was still very sticky - but it will dry out just fine in the oven.

Adding the flour - will feel dry, but it'll still be sticky

There's probably an easier way to do this - but, that darn sticky dough!

I'm sure someone can think of an easier way to do this but I used my hands to put a layer of dough onto my Silpat and pressed it until it was a roughly even 1/4-1/3 inch thick. Then I used my cookie cutter and picked the bits out in between to use on my next tray. Sprinkle with a bit of Parmesan cheese and they're ready to bake!

After peeling out the leftover scraps between the "bones"

It's not weird to eat dog-shaped cookies, right?
Like humans eating gingerbread men??

Bake at 350° for 20 minutes. The cookies will be quite dry by this point. But I wanted to dry them even more so that they were like crackers and not soft at all. I used a spatula to get the cookies off the Silpat and crammed all the cookies onto 1 sheet (had baked 2 sheets). Then I baked them at 300° for another 20 minutes. 250° would be fine too - just to dry them some more. You could even just leave them in the hot oven (turned off) for a few hours and they'll also dry out very well...But we wanted to EAT them tonight!!

Ooooh crunchy cookies - Happy Birthday to me!

Carter was lucky he was visiting during Lucca's birthday!

Needless to say, they were a hit. With Yellow Labs and Bernese Mountain Doggies alike... Oh and then we let them wash it down with a birthday swig 'o Grand Marnier.

Just kidding!