Hello.
In our endless effort to keep our dog occupied we've hit on a recipe that has been working well. But because it is oatmeal-based I wanted to check in with the forum.

Our dog is on a raw diet. For training treats we use liver biscotti, simon and huey's, and bits of raw beef (highly recommended for automatic recall!!).

The recipie is:

1 and 1/3 cup of oatmeal that has been cooked to death in water - very goopy and gluey.

Mix in 2 little jars of all-meat baby food.

Pack tightly in a Kong.

Insert a strip of some sort of treat in the center.
(I've used a long strip of raw beef, and a Plato chicken strip both to good effect. Using a dried jerky strip seems to make the whole thing too difficult, plus is probably not yummy enough to be interesting).

Freeze.

This makes enough for quite a few large Kongs.

This concoction seems to be a nice substitute for a raw marrow bone when we'd like Lily to work for a while on a snack, and to get some exercise chomping on the Kong. And I've got to think that it is quite a bit lower-cal and lower-fat than stuffing a Kong full of cream cheese or peanut butter, which seem to be the standard recipies.

Also, Lily recently started bringing up clear bile early in the morning, but the problem has gone away since we started giving her an "oat goop kong" right before bed. Our guess was that the bile issue was due to hunger, as we've read that this can happen.

One of the reasons we went to the raw diet was what we read about the problems that dogs have with grains. But I haven't found much on the forum about oats, and I noticed that Simon and Hueys are made with oat flour, so I'm hoping that there is not a lot to be concerned about here.

Thanks a bunch.
- Jesse

Unless the dog has a weight issue, I don't worry about fat for dogs.

Oats are grains. I don't mind at all giving tiny pencil-eraser-size treats of oats, though, and I wouldn't mind giving a Kong-full either, mixed as it sounds like it is half-and-half with meat (baby food), if it was just a small part of the diet.

Something else you can do with the oatmeal to add some protein in cheap to this glop is:

Cook the oatmeal as directed. When it is boiling, add some beaten eggs egg drop soup style. (pour in slowly as you are stirring the oatmeal)The end result looks like regular oatmeal and can still be manipulated into a kong, but has some protein added.

To that you can add anything you want really. Chicken broth to sub for water, peanut butter in the oatmeal.. etc.

 Quote: Deanna Thompson

Something else you can do with the oatmeal to add some protein in cheap to this glop is:

Cook the oatmeal as directed. When it is boiling, add some beaten eggs egg drop soup style. (pour in slowly as you are stirring the oatmeal)The end result looks like regular oatmeal and can still be manipulated into a kong, but has some protein added.

To that you can add anything you want really. Chicken broth to sub for water, peanut butter in the oatmeal.. etc.

I like that.

I also liked the O.P.'s raw meat strip in the center to keep enthusiasm high.