Make Your Own: Sweet Potato Treats

I enjoy making my own dog goodies. In fact, I think I probably enjoy it more than making people food. While flipping through Modern Dog I came across a simple recipe for making sweet potato chews and decided to try it out. I grabbed a sweet potato at the store last week, but it was a busy week. So today was the first chance I got to start the endeavor.

First, I got my oven preheating to 250° - then I scrubbed the potato up. It is not necessary to peel it.

Although I skimmed for one I didn't see a potato that was a relatively normal shape, so I just found one and went with it. Next up, slicing.

Now I do have a mandolin, but I chose to forgo that and use a plain ol' knife. (Mostly because I wanted different thickness levels.)

Thicker pieces are going to need a little more cook time. Or, bake time. Whatever. There are some dog safe spices that you can use. For this test batch I only used cinnamon on about 4-5 pieces. (Again - test process.)

Arrange them on a plain, untreated cookie sheet. In a single layer. (You'll notice I have a variety of shapes and sizes. This is largely for test purposes. Also, I hate being wasteful.)

The recipe said about 3 hours cook time. Only the thickest pieces made it that long.

Pop them in your oven, and do not set and forget! Please keep an eye on things, especially if you're doing thinner pieces. I set a timer for 90 minutes and wandered back around the 60 minute mark to check on them. At that point, some of my smaller, thin slices were actually ready to come out.

At the 90 minute mark, a few more came out, but the rest stayed another 90 minutes.

Seemed to me like Miss Isabella & Angel preferred the chewy, thicker variety - while Ebony tended to enjoy the crunchier, thin pieces. To each dog their own, I guess.

Either way - they were winners. I look forward to making more of them. In larger batches, of course. (Angel took her snack to the other room and I didn't get a photo of her eating it. Sorry!)

Isabella, and her snack.

Ebony, investigating first - then later, eating.

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Review: Natural Defense Flea/Tick Treatment

I don't consider myself a super green person, but I do try and stay as green as I can possibly be.
I admit to having always used Frontline-type flea/tick treatments on my dogs, but we found that one of the dogs was allergic to an ingredient in them and it would (seemingly) cause her a great deal of discomfort.
Despite her being a full on drama queen, I am inclined to believe something irritates her about these products. So I went on the search for something else to use. 

This was a few years ago, during a particularly bad flea problem in this area. Most years we had no real issues, and didn't bother to treat the animals themselves regularly. (Didn't seem necessary. No point in treating a problem we didn't have.) I don't know what has changed exactly, although I tend to blame it on the two stray-ish cats I see wandering around. One is about as nasty looking as can be. I imagine if any living creature was carrying bugs, it'd be him.

This product has been described by some as having a "Christmas" like smell. I really don't know. It's strong though. We suspect that maybe it works by simply choking the fleas to death. For the first 24-36 hours she was almost unbearable to be around. No lap sitting for her. No thanks..
It's cinnamon, and clove, and lord knows what else. The smell isn't awful. It's just strong. A lot to take, especially after the initial application.

Sentry has an entire line of "natural" flea and tick products. Although at this point we have only tried out the squeeze-on treatment and the household spray. (Made that switch, too, as the chemicals in whatever we had been using before made my throat burn and had me coughing like nobody's business.)

Like normal, if you read reviews, you're going to get some mixed ones. I read up before I ordered and saw that the largest amount of complaints seemed to be relating to the smell (gasp) or on lighter dogs apparently this stuff can leave some discoloration in it's wake (ruh-roh.) Seemingly, most people agree that they have fewer or no issues with fleas after application though. 


We still treat our other dogs (not year 'round), as well as our fenced area and just outside the fence. In the past it seemed that she would pick up a flea some place and end up scratching like the devil though the other girls were fine. Since using this product she has not picked up any fleas, so, for whatever reason, I am inclined to believe it works.
After using this for a while, I began to buy it for Cleopatra as well (in the cat type, of course.)
This spring it should be about time for another round of treatment - I'm thinking of biting the bullet and treating the whole pack with Sentry's Natural Defense.

Has anyone else tried natural flea treatments? (As in, the type you apply to your dog.) I'm curious. Tell me all about it if you have!

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