Tail Wagging Tuesday

I've linked up again to CMae's Tail Wagger of a post!
So for this Tail Wagging Tuesday we are talking about the treats that our pets enjoy.

Please excuse the blurriness/nasty light in the photos. One was taken with a basic point and shoot at night, and the others were taken with my cell phone this morning as I looked for my least wrinkled pair of pants simultaneously.

So Bruin does enjoy treats. He's not as food motivated as the other dogs I've had before but he does recognize the sound of his treat jar when it's opened enough to come running.

The jar I painted for him at one of those make your own pottery places..

We try to only give him treats when we're training or we want to reward him so that they don't become ineffective when we do want to teach him something. Or when we want him to sit and pose for a picture with one of his "cousins".

Bruin and Lucy begging for treats like champs.

When he was going through heartworm treatment we had to keep him super quiet, not active at all, and sometimes in the crate while we were gone during the day and periods of time while we were at home.

IT WAS HORRIBLE.

  During treatment he would sometimes decide that he would take after his  favorite peace activist Gandhi, and not eat his food in protest to the fact that he was stuck in a crate. Which I don't really blame him.  So on days that he was especially determined to show the world his kibble was not to be eaten if we made him stay in that stupid cage thing, we'd give him a treat just so he wouldn't waste away into nothing.

Thankfully he got over that pretty quickly and started eating on the regular after his EONS TWO MONTH LONG treatment was done and we could let him roam free. Who knows, he might resort to some drastic measures and decide to strike if they decide to cancel the Jersey Shore. We'll see. Until then we're back to treats for training only.

As far as the brand, my rule of thumb is usually that my dog doesn't get to eat nicer than I do.

We're store brand kind of people, unless it comes to important things. Like mouthwash and Cheez-Its.

So Bruin gets store brand milkbones. 

You know, the ones about an inch long that come in different colors. A little more than bite sized. He likes to break them up into pieces so they're more managable. And, well, we wouldn't want to be confused as not having any manners now would we?

AMNOMNOMNOM

Now I know we're not posting up like the types of bones, chews, toys etc. We all know how I could go on for hours on Bruin's Rawhide antics... But I thought that the following might kind of a crossover between the two.

As I mentioned we had to imprison Bruin in his crate for two months because of heartworm. This dog's mind is always going, so you could see how we were presented with a conundrum of keeping his brain busy and not anxious during the time. (And believe me I'll do a heartworm post too. Some of the things we did to keep this dog happy were a little extreme even for us.) So we got the tip from a friend about something we could do with his cong.  We've filled it up with straight peanutbutter before just to give him something different, but we found with a lot of time, he ate it too fast.

Thanks to a helpful coworker of Dave's though, we now have Bruin's most favorite treat/chewing and licking extravaganza. For this you will need:


1.  1 Konga
2. Peanut Butter. (Bruin likes crunchy. Have that conversation with your dog first before you going ahead and assume though. You know what happens when you assume...you might be wrong.. :)
3. Plain yogurt that you accidentally grabbed at the grocery market because DAMNIT IT LOOKS JUST LIKE THE VANILLA KIND THEY'RE THE SAME COLOR AND EVERYTHING!

Feel free and judge the store brand everything...

So, first stuff it halfway with peanut butter.

Then, stuff the other half with plain yogurt. (After the peanut butter so it doesn't drip out of the end.)

When finished, stick the kong in the freezer. Put a plastic bag underneath because the plain yogurt might be a little drippy.

Leave it in there for a few hours or whenever you open the freezer next and remember that you stuck it in there.

Not only does Bruin love the fact that he gets to watch his figure by indulging in some frozen yogurt, but his favorite part (or I'd like to imagine it is) is later. If there's peanut butter he can't get immediately he'll throw the kong around and claw at it and bend it so he can get all of the stuff left at the bottom.

So there you have it! If you looked into my dogs intestines these are some things you might find!
Oh, and maybe some stuffing from his sharky. There was no stopping that.