Pumpkin and Bacon Dog Treats

On June 18th Diego turns two, and in our household we like to do a 'Birthday Week' which means that the birthday is not just allocated to one day, you get a whole week of celebrations. Sometimes more. My sister really loves to turn it into 'Birthday Month'. 

For the first part of Diego's Birthday Week, I made some Pumpkin and Bacon dog treats. Pumpkins are super cheap at the moment in New Zealand, I purchased a whole pumpkin for $1.50. The rest of the ingredients were easily found in your pantry, or inexpensive to purchase.

I am going to admit from the start, I am chaos in the kitchen. I HATE measuring, and have trouble following any recipe for that reason. I generally try to follow a recipe perfect the first time, and then any subsequent times are me eyeballing measurements and choosing different ingredients. I have made the Peanut Butter and Bacon Biscuits a lot, and these always turn out well, although slightly different each time. This time, I thought that I would replace the peanut butter with pumpkin.

I didn't search up the previous recipe, and I most definitely left ingredients out but the end result isn't too bad. I boiled, and then mashed the pumpkin and mixed that with precooked bacon bits. Following that I added oats, wheatmeal flour and a bit of baking powder. I will admit now, the recipe needs tweaking. These turned out more like fritters than the biscuits I was going for. The dogs however love them, and they really don't mind that the texture is a bit different.

Pumpkin is a good vegetable to get into your dogs diet, and with it being so cheap at the moment, it is a good time to start. We have made a couple of pumpkin recipes including Pumpkin Pupcakes and Pumpkin Pupsicles. Diego has really enjoyed all the recipes we have made with pumpkin. Plus the extra bacon in this recipe really makes the dogs go wild for them. I am currently using them as a training treat for Diego to learn Weave for agility.

Have you made any pumpkin recipes for your pups, how did they go down? Leave us a comment below or tag us on Instagram with the hashtag #daisypets.