Don’t Eat This

Instead of Food You Can Eat, this is food that is only fit for a dog. But in a good way.

Occasionally we’ll pick up bones for our dog from the pet store. They’re dried and covered with who knows what. However, she’ll eventually chew them clean and lose interest. And instead of throwing them out, I’ll coat and them fill them with new glop.

Here are the bones that have been stripped clean.

Gross Stuff

First, I put half a cup or so of unsalted, unsweetened peanut butter in a bowl.

Next, a roughly equal amount of plain oatmeal.

Then, a couple of eggs.

Next, a bunch of dust and crumbs from the bottom of the dog treat jar.

After mixing it up, it seemed kind of thick, so I added another egg.

Finishing Up

Next I put a piece of baking parchment paper on a rack for the toaster oven, then jammed the mix into the bones and slathered the rest on the outside. It’s awfully gummy, gooey stuff, so it sticks pretty well.

Finally, I baked them in the toaster oven at about 300F for about 45 minutes, until the coating was hard and crunchy both inside the bones and out. Make sure you’ve really baked it hard, because the last thing you want is still-gooey egg mix slowly stinking up deep inside these bones.

Things to Think About

First, these are bones I know our dog can’t crack or spinter. We’ve occasionally gotten ones from the store which she snaps apart easily, so we watch out for those from the start, and if they look fragile they go in the trash right away.

Second, this is all ingredients we know she can eat. Some dogs are sensitive to different things, so substitute wisely. You could probably just mix the dust from their regular dog food with eggs and use that. Whatever you know they can digest.

Finally, this mix is high in calories, and they’re not balanced nutritionally, so we dole these out slowly. It usually takes her a long time to completely clean them out, so it’s not a huge impact on her overall diet, but we don’t give out more than one per week.

If you do eat them yourself, definitely share what you thought.