Summer's Gone to the Dogs

One of the first recipes I made off of Pinterest was for our dogs.  It was a summer "ice cream" recipe. Apparently, lactose is hard for dogs to digest so it is recommended that you don't give your dog real ice cream.  Someone should tell S'more that as she has gone to Dairy Queen with me for as long as I have had her and had her own vanilla ice cream cone.  S'more is my first as a grown up dog and she is 10 years old.  I adopted her when she was two from the shelter here in Manhappiness.  She's been a great dog and a true testament as to why shelter dogs make wonderful pets.  Molly is our 2 1/2 year old also from the same shelter.  We are currently going through our terrible teen years with Molly.  Actually, once Molly realized that we have rules and the rules are going to be consistently enforced every time she has turned into a great dog.  She'd be the first to tell you it is hard to live in the shadow of a great dog like, S'more. 

Molly is on the left in the back and S'more is in the front to the right. 

Once summer hit I wanted to treat our dogs to the refreshing cool of ice cream.  Trying to be a conscience dog owner, left me in a little bit of a quandary.  Then one day as a was perusing Pinterest I came across the recipe for Frosty Paws.  Frosty Paws uses a recipe that calls for using yogurt and apparently yogurt has less lactose than ice cream so it is better for your pup.  (I don't research these claims.)  I immediately decided I was going to make these recipes for our dogs, well, because it sounded like so much fun! 

If you Google Frosty Paws recipe you'll get many different variations on what is essentially the same thing.  I used the following recipe, which combined suggestions from several different recipes:
Frosty Paws
1-32 oz. container Vanilla Yogurt
2 T Peanut Butter
2 T Honey
4 oz. Banana baby food (or 1 banana smashed)
Combine all ingredients until smooth.  Pour into small cups and freeze. 
*If your dog has a weight problem you could use fat free yogurt.  You can substitute in various fruits for the banana for a new flavor.  If you use Dixie cups like I did, be sure to pull the paper off first just in case you have a dog who isn't bothered by a little paper getting in the way of a tasty treat.  Molly is part goat and will eat the paper if I don't pull it off.

 For fun I decided to freeze some of the recipe in the pups Kongs.  Molly's dog trainer, Nadja, from Mutt School here in Manhappiness, recommends freezing different concoctions in Kongs to occupy dogs and stimulate their brains to work for their food.  S'more was all about the frozen Kongs.



S'more working diligently on getting her treat out of her Kong.

 Molly thought it was a lot of work and didn't have the stamina (a teacher term) to stick with it.  So S'more was more than happy to help Molly finish hers. 

Molly exhausted from all that hard work.