Jaxson, Chief Taste Tester
Elaine’s Canine Cookies
Homemade Gourmet Dog Treats, Cookies, Cakes and Pupcakes, Made in Small Batches… with Love!
By Jaxson, Chief Taste Tester
It all started with Shelby, our Mom’s beloved Wheaten Terrier. Shelby kept getting hotspots on her skin that were stubborn to heal. ( We dogs Hate that!) Turned out that she was allergic to wheat. That started our Mom, Elaine Hay on a hunt through grocery and pet stores, reading the labels for food and treats that were safe to give her.
Mom has lived with dogs and cats all her life, so she bought commercial food for all her pets for years, but hadn’t really paid all that much attention to the ingredients – Mom says she assumed that if the big name pet food companies were allowed to sell it, it must be good for us pets– right? Boy did Mom get an education! Well, when she really started to pay close attention to the labels she was shocked and really dismayed to see not only the high content of wheat and other fillers in all the commercial brands (even the ones that were more expensive and supposed to be good for us!) – but also all the chemicals and preservatives – yuck!
Once she really studied the labels Mom said she knew that she couldn’t go back to actually feeding us dogs that stuff. (Thanks Mom!)
Superfoods for Dogs
Mom started researching and reading up about “superfoods” for dogs – actually most of them are superfoods for humans, too! – and then she started to experiment with various combinations of ingredients that could be made into cookie doughs that Shelby could tolerate.
Mom doesn’t really know if it was her treats,or something she calls “divine intervention”, or maybe Shelby just outgrew her allergies, but shortly after switching to her homemade dog treats the hotspots stopped! Shelby and her sister dog Brooklyn really loved Mom’s homemade treats and they soon decided they didn’t want anymore treats that were store bought.
High Grade, High Value Treats,Cookies, Canine cakes and Pupcakes
Over the years, and three more dogs in Mom’s life, she continued to experiment and expand her repertoire of recipes, always challenging herself to produce high grade, high value treats with no “bad stuff” – no chemicals, no refined sugars and no preservatives, made with human grade foods. Me and my sister dogs love when she tries out new recipes,’cause we are the ones that get to eat them all – yum yum yum!
Pretty soon Mom started to expand the taste tests to our best friends. Our canine buddies also prefer my Mom’s treats over store bought ones (duh!!), and lots of them have managed to convince their pet parents to ask Mom if they could please buy some for them too. So we began our business of offering Mom’s treats for sale to everyone. My sister dog Bella ( she’s older and more fussy than I am – I AM a Lab after all ;-)) me, and my younger sister dog Ms Triggs and Mom have been working hard to create the best recipes – and Mom and her friends put together this website so pet parents can see what we are doing. Its been lots of fun for us all, and I know Mom is so happy to know that she’s helping other dogs eat better tasting treats that are really nutritious for us all !
A few years ago, she started making cakes for special occasions like our birthdays and our friends’ Gotcha days, puppy showers and our athletic achievements like Nosework and Agility titles! They are full of good stuff for us but we don’t care about that so much – they taste so good and look just like cakes our humans eat! and we can share them at parties with our friends!
Mom has a “real” job, besides all that she does for us, so she does her baking mostly at nights and on the weekends. She says she’s not sure where this journey will take us, but as the business grows, Bella and I, and our little sister Ms.Triggs—In-House Taste Testers—are always willing to step up our taste testing responsibilities in the kitchen to help out! We have a really tough job ( wink! wink!) but we take it very seriously!