Halloween dog treats DOs and BOOs & a homemade treat recipe 🎃

There are few things in life better than Halloween for a kid. It’s the one time a year where you can indulge on treats, with total abandon. While it’s tempting to do the same for our pups, there are some DOs and BOOs when it comes to treating our furry companions during this time of year. There's also a recipe for a DIY homemade Halloween dog treat that is easy to do and safe to give.

Do. Make sure that treats make up no more than 10% of your dog’s daily calories. This rule of thumb helps to avoid giving an excessive amount of extra calories (which will cause weight gain), and to also reduce the risk of unbalancing your dog’s main meal. We all know that feeding a complete and balanced diet is important and giving lots of extra calories as treats may unbalance their diet.

So, how much is 10% of your dog’s daily calories? You can work out your dog's daily caloric needs by using our handy feeding calculator. Take their daily energy requirement and multiply by 0.10 to calculate the 10% calories they can have as treats. Once you start looking at what that actually equates to in food, you'll find that it can add up quickly! For a 10kg dog requiring about 530 kcal per day, they can have about 53 kcal per day as treats. Each of these foods is about 53 kcals:

• ½ medium-sized apple

• 1 ½ medium carrot

• 1 (Australian) tablespoon full-fat yoghurt

• 13 grams of tasty cheese or a small cheese cube

• 1 ½ teaspoon peanut butter

It's not much once you do the maths, so please be mindful with how free you are handing out goodies to your dog.

Do. Try using treat dispensers/puzzle feeders/toys to enrich your dog’s experience. This will not only stimulate their minds, which is particularly important in puppies and senior dogs, but it also extends out the enjoyment period - especially with those that tend to wolf down their food.

You can make your own puzzle feeder at home using a muffin tray and tennis balls. Put a couple of treats in some of the sections and cover all openings with a tennis ball. Your dog will have to nosy around to find all the yummy goodies. You can even move to more advanced games of hide and seek with treats. Have your dog wait outside of a room where they can't see you, and hide a treat or two around the room. Call your dog and encourage them to find the treat. They'll quickly learn that this is a really fun game! Just remember where you left the treats in case they don’t find all of them!

Boo. Don’t forget to supervise your dog when they’re enjoying their treat, especially with greedy dogs. These dogs want to break off and swallow their treats in chunks, which is a choking risk, and can cause an obstruction in the oesophagus or intestines. Also, excessively hard treats that aren’t malleable, or soften quickly with chewing can cause tooth fractures. This includes heavy, weight-bearing bones, which should be avoided.

Boo. Don’t give human candies to dogs, especially chocolates. Chocolates (and cocoa) contain the alkaloid, theobromine, and caffeine, which are toxic to dogs. Humans can metabolise these compounds quickly, whereas dogs cannot, putting them at risk. Cats can get theobromine/caffeine toxicity as well, although they aren’t known to readily eat chocolate.

The darker the chocolate, the more theobromine and caffeine there are:

Concentrations of theobromine and caffeine in different types of chocolates

Initial clinical signs of chocolate toxicity include vomiting, diarrhoea, increased drinking, increased body temperature, and restlessness. These can occur within a few hours to 12 hours after a dog eats chocolate. These can progress to more serious signs including cardiac arrhythmias, ataxia, tremours, stiffness, and seizures. If you are worried that your dog ate something with chocolate, you should call your vet immediately. There are also online chocolate toxicity calculators which can advise if the amount of chocolate your dog ate puts them at risk, or whether you need to seek treatment straight away.

So, leave the candy and instead DO let your dog in on the fun during Halloween by making your own safe and healthy dog-friendly, Halloween treat! This treat is low in fat and so much fun.

Lemon vanilla meringue ghosts 👻

Ingredients

Egg whites from 4 eggs

½ teaspoon lemon juice

¼ teaspoon natural vanilla extract

Icing option 1

20 grams egg white

60 grams icing sugar

Blackberry juice/activated charcoal

Icing option 2

Vegemite

Instructions

1.     Take the eggs out of the fridge and allow them to come to room temperature.

2.     Preheat the oven to 110°C.

3.     Separate the egg yolks from the egg white. Repurpose the egg yolks for something else.

4.     Weigh out 20 grams of egg white and set aside for the icing. Beat the remaining egg white until soft peaks form, which will take a few minutes.

5.     Add the lemon juice and vanilla extract.

6.     Continue to beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

7.     Add to piping bag and pipe out your ghosts.

8.     Bake in the oven for 20 – 30 minutes until they are set. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

9.     For the icing, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.

10.  Add the icing sugar, a little at a time, and beat until smooth.

11.  Add the blackberry juice for a purple icing or activated charcoal for black icing. Beat until well incorporated. You can also use Vegemite instead of making your own, use it just like you would with icing.

12.  Pipe your ghost eyes and a mouth if desired.

13.  Serve and watch your dog enjoy, or store in the fridge for up to three days.

Happy Howl-oween!