A Short Memoir of Cooking for Dogs

by Sandy Lurins

I’ve been a cook pretty much all my life, starting at age five. By age seven I could make a spaghetti dinner for my family. In my teens I turned out fairly complicated entrees and complete menus. It was only natural that at some point, my culinary adventures would take me to cooking for dogs, who are, after all, my favorite people.

The first time I cooked for dogs, I was living a somewhat unsettled life in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My dog Sun-Lu (Malamute/Lab mix) and I were part of a household that included Jimmy, a rescued German Shepherd, and Windy, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever known for his, well, windiness.

I had come across some recipes for home made dog treats. This was back in the late 80s before the pooch pampering craze. If you just bought your dog "premium" dog food you were in the top echelon. So when I announced to my housemate that I was going to make home-made dog treats, this was quite a novel idea, met with curious skepticism.

Of course I rarely do anything less than sublime in the kitchen, and this was going to be no different. I pored over the recipes and passed over such mundane choices as Whole Grain Yummies and Cheesy Crunchies. Even the Peanut Butter-Wheat Germ Biscuits were not quite what I was looking for. Then I found it: Lotta Liver Cookies. This, I said, the dogs will love.

Hey, Windy, what’s that smell?

If you have never cooked much with liver, especially in dog treats, you must understand something quite essential. To be incorporated into the flour, wheat germ, and other ingredients, the liver must first be pulverized. Pureed. Liquefied. This is NOT a pleasant task for us humans. Essentially, one turns beef liver into a liquid that can best be described as clumpy blood. I can’t even tell you what this smells like but it is not pretty.

Ahh, but the savvy dog owner can imagine where this is going. To a dog, two pounds of pulverized liver smells like heaven. At this point in my cooking, all three dogs came into the kitchen from their various positions of repose. I found myself with almost 250 pounds of dog clinging like Velcro to my side in the small galley kitchen.

The recipe was pretty straightforward, the only tedious part of course being cutting so much dough (for 3 large dogs I decided to make a triple batch) into stars, diamonds, and kitties (back in those days it was not easy to find bone- or squirrel-shaped cookie cutters). After baking the cookies had to sit in the oven a few more hours to dry. And during this entire time, yes, 250 pounds of dog lay down on the kitchen floor and guarded the contents of the oven. They were not even interested in going for a walk, so fascinated were they by the smell of the treats. Except for me, the household humans had all vanished in search of fresher air.

When the dogs could finally sample the cookies, they were ecstatic. They didn’t leave my side for three days while the treats were consumed. This was one of my greatest culinary successes. Too bad for the dogs, I have not repeated it.

My dog eats better than I do!

Fast forward ten years, to the late 90s. Having lived out west a while and much more aware of nutrition, organic ingredients, etc., I once again take a stab at cooking for the dog in my life, this one a Lab/Plott Hound mix named Ben Sr. I turned out all sorts of non-liver based treats: yummy banana-peanut butter cookies, peanut butter soy biscuits, all made with organic ingredients. I had a whole collection of bone-shaped cutters too.

Of course the next step is to go beyond treats and make the dog’s meals. Prompted by an assessment by our vet that the young Ben Sr. would likely develop hip dysplasia, I consulted with knowledgeable friends and the current edition of Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats looking for some elixir that would shield him.

Because I am the kind of cook who rarely makes a recipe as it was written (I have to "mark" it as my own), I came up with a dog food patty that I dubbed "Bennie Burgers." Made with raw lamb, beets, kale, turnips, garlic, brown rice, and a mishmash of nutrititional supplements, including heavy doses of glucosmamine, Bennie Burgers were almost as irresistible to dogs as those liver cookies, but not nearly as smelly. And they were full of veggies that I believe to be healthful but rarely eat myself, such as kale.

They were messy, though. Production of the burgers includes shredding beets in the food processor, and beet stains would be everywhere when I was done. And the smell of beets, while not as compelling as liver, made Ben Sr. come running into the room.

Bennie Burgers have evolved some over the years. At one point I was advised not to use raw meat, so I started browning the meat. (Now I have more confidence that I can safely make these burgers with raw meat.) I don’t make patties any more; now I simply put the mix into plastic containers that each hold about 3 days’ worth, and thaw one container at a time.

But I have to confess, I rarely make Bennie Burgers these days. I don’t bake many dog treats, either. Today, us pet people have many options for buying ready-made, healthy pet foods at our local pet store, or even having raw food diets delivered to our door. We also have great local makers and purveyors of all kinds of treats: from rustic, organic, whole foods biscuits to fancy, decorated nibbles that look like "people food." But trust me: if you want to bond with your dog through shared culinary experience, just pulverize some beef liver and make treats with it. You’ll have a friend for life.