Homemade treats for CIL dogs

[Annie's Mom]

Hi all, Does anyone have any homemade snack recipes for CIL dogs that they could share? I'm not a baker, but I tried my hand at something today...

Since Annie has been sick she's been off her fave treats (and likely will forever). 
We used to have "treat o'clock" at 8PM every evening and I would give her, and my other dog, a special treat (which is all natural and, ironically, very low in fat, but I'm hesitant to give it to her because I don't know how easily digestible it is). 

I'd still like to give her something "special" to eat for "treat o'clock" so I've been on a mission over the last couple of days to see if I can find a recipe that's low-fat and limited ingredients. Also she is completely refusing the dry food and so I wanted to try to incorporate the dry into her diet in some way. 
I ended up with the following concoction today - I think it's OK for fat content - and she loved the first taste testing. 
I just made a small batch.

Here's what I used:
- 1/2 cup of the Royal Canin GI Low Fat DRY food. I blended it up as fine as my crappy blender could make it. It ended up that there was some powder and some pieces that were about the size of a small grain of rice which actually was ok.
- 1/2 cup very finely chopped chicken breasts (which I had previously cut and boiled for two hours to remove some more fat) 
- one egg white
- honey (I didn't measure, but I'd guess about a tablespoon)
- 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon (which has natural anti-inflammatory qualities and is approved by my vet)
- I mixed the above and then flattened it to about 1/8 inch thick (kind of like a pancake) 
- I pan fried it in my non-stick pan without any oil. I browned it slightly on both sides.
It didn't turn out as crunchy as I had hoped but she loved it. 

I'm not sure about the fat content of egg whites. I did some reading and most of the fat in the egg is in the yolk and the white has very little fat (0.2g). But I'm not sure how much egg white would be too much. I'd actually like to put 1.5 to 2 egg whites in the above mixture to help with binding.

[LouiesMom]

There's virtually no fat in egg white, so use it freely as it's a great protein source. Thanks for sharing your recipe!

[katie.l.rogers@hotmail.com]

I dehydrate slices of sweet potato in the oven for about 7 hours at 175! 
I also will buy pork loin and cut the fat off of it, slice it into tiny thin strips, cook it at 375 for 30 minutes then dehydrate it at 175 for 4-6 hours....my dogs loooove this. 

I also have a bag of veggies ready at any time... kale, carrots, beans, cabbage (can induce gas so introduce slowly), etc.

[Annie's Mom]

Thanks Katie, those are great ideas. I've never dehydrated anything in the oven before so it'll be fun to try. I think the pork loin is a fantastic idea.
I have never been able to get either of my dogs to eat veggies or fruit. I have had four foster dogs who ate all sorts of healthy veggies. But not my dogs, They are meatetarians.

Having said that, while Annie is in such an acute state with her Lymphangiectasia, I have decided that the only treat she's getting is tuna. Hopefully one day she'll be able to have something else. But for now I need to be so very careful with everything that goes into her mouth. It took me a while to figure that out - that she doesn't need treats - she just needs to survive. And pitying her "treat tooth" isn't going to help her. 

Thankfully she LOVES tuna!

[katie.l.rogers@hotmail.com]

No problem

Lilo has improved since her diagnosis almost four months ago, but just yesterday she started with diarrhea. So back to square one with us and no more treats too. It's so hard...I'm still so new to all of this and am getting discouraged. Such a tough one to get into remission and feel confident about staying there. 

Good thing is, no other signs of proteins dropping so I am hoping it's a fluke and that she can wait until her checkup on Saturday. We will see. So hard to tell. Ugh!

[dpressley]

We were doing the sweet potato "chips" and that would be OK, but it was an occasional treat because I found that too much carbs sent his gut microbiome into a tissy. The most innocuous but cosistent thing we found was unsalted rice cakes! We would break in small pieces and use them as training treats & he LOVED them. Other dogs would see he was getting something & they would come to see what it was but they wouldn't touch them! He sure liked them, tho! I think the trick was they were mostly air and that way it wasn't too much carbs.