Recall treats – a low cost DIY recipe
Ever wondered what a fifty-metre recall looks like? Try making these low cost, healthy training super-treats, your dog will love you even more!
This month we’re looking at higher grade training treats for when we need some oomph! And a recipe for something you can try yourself. Now, I know how frustrating reading a blog with a recipe can be – you have scroll to the very bottom to find what you really want to know: what is it and how do I make it? So I’ll give that part to you now, the Why comes after. Let’s get a disclaimer out of the way first. This does not replace a meal or a complete, balanced diet. I am not responsible for how you make or store it, and nor do I advocate you trying it without knowing your dog’s allergies. I am simply sharing with you something that works really well for me, and we’ll discuss super- treats in general.
This is a training treat that can be used for when you need a higher-value food to aid you for the really important training techniques such as RECALL. They are basically dog-friendly mini-hamburgers (5ml teaspoon size in fact) that you can easily make yourself, and unlike shop-bought, you know what goes in them – and it’s good stuff!
Teaspoon Burgers Recipe
Ingredients
- 1lb / 450g minced beef (ideally not extra lean, but 10% fat)
- 1 small/medium carrot, finely diced
- 1.5 tablespoons chickpea flour (or other suitable grain-free flour, or normal plain flour if you know your dog is okay with gluten)
- 1 egg
Time to make
About an hour: 5 mins chopping/mixing, 35 mins measuring out, 20+ mins baking. Allow a little more time afterwards for general faffing with freezing.
Method
- Prepare a large or two medium baking trays with baking paper on them.
- Mix up well all the ingredients in a bowl, resulting in a slightly sticky solid mass! (easier to handle when the mince is cold).
- Now for measuring them out. This takes a little over half an hour and is the boring bit. Stick a podcast on, or sing to your dog! 20 minutes in-
- Preheat the oven to 180C or 170C fan.
- Fill a 1 teaspoon measuring spoon (5ml) or just use a small teaspoon – then thumb out flat side down onto the baking tray. You should have a small dome – thumb the middle down a little. Repeat until you have filled your tray(s). If there is anything left over you can save the mixture in the fridge for 24hrs.
- Bake for 20+ minutes until definitely well done and cooked through (I usually end up doing 25 minutes because I’m paranoid).
Makes about 96: allow to cool, keep them separate and freeze on trays, then bag up in batches to put back in the freezer.
Defrost thoroughly smaller batches as and when needed (overnight in a container in the fridge): use within 48hrs once kept in the fridge. If you have a large dog you can make fewer, larger burgers, by all means experiment with the portion sizing.
So why are these good? Other things are too
We usually train and walk our dogs with very small treats which are normally enough to do the trick with rewarding and which can be used with high frequency especially for short bursts of training. But we also need what I call a “Ferrari Food”: a high (taste) value, more substantial treat which we would use much less often, but for the really important never-fail situations, such as recalling our dog back to us. We need something so irresistible that our dog will always prefer it to whatever else is tempting them away.
So what else can we use?
Home-made or prepared things like cooked chicken are wonderful. Chicken is good. We like chicken. But it’s not cheap. Sausages are okay and very tempting for a dog, but their ingredients are a minefield so care is needed: they will often contain gluten at the least, or worse, certain spices such as nutmeg which are dog-toxic. So do check the ingredients forensically or ask your butcher for a complete breakdown. If your dog easily puts on weight, best avoided on a regular basis. Otherwise, good to go. Cubed cheese (not processed) is okay but only for occasional use: dogs find it difficult to digest dairy so I will only use this if I am caught short on a certain day. So please use sparingly. Frankfurters are the probably the best workhorse treat in terms of value. Beware some brands are not wheat/gluten-free if this is an issue for you, and they are of course processed meat, so I would caution against their long-term, frequent use. But dogs love them and their undeniable £ value and ease of handling makes occasional use, or short-term intense use for training periods fine, other things being equal. And who doesn’t like hot dogs anyway? Just siphon off a few for your faithful companion.
And what about fruit and veg?
Dog-safe varieties are always a good idea for a treat anyway, but for Recall I am afraid chicken will beat a carrot every time, and remember we are talking about something that’s irresistible.
Shop-bought treats
Like the home-made items mentioned above, if you have found something that works for you (and your dog!), then that’s good, I am not here to ask you to change. What I do want to do is share with you the problem I was having, as I know I am not alone.
Household budgets are being squeezed these days, I hear you. I was looking at ways to reasonably economize on the things where at least we have a little control, like our food. I used to buy the most expensive “recall” treats I could afford, because generally speaking you get what you pay for and the more expensive brands tend to be healthier (but always check!). I am a great believer in natural foods and minimum processing, and if I want to eat well, even on a budget, I certainly want the dog to eat well (in fact, he comes first!).
The problem?
Over £3 now for a 65g bag of something that is still processed to a degree, still using filler ingredients, and was lasting me, ooh, maybe 5 days? (3 days if we encountered wild animals or a discarded pizza on a walk, I was a posh vending machine). Trading down to cheaper brands for me wasn’t an option, so I researched and experimented and arrived at these burgers. I did not come across this exact recipe, though no doubt someone else somewhere has come up with the same thing. The bottom line?
Low cost
Including leccy for the oven, these come in at approx. £6 (Feb’23 prices) for 96 treats which last me for 3 weeks for a medium-sized dog. And that’s using good quality beef mince and a free-range egg, so you could do it a little cheaper than that. This will vary for you of course, depending on their use and the size of your dog, but a like-for-like comparison in my case with good quality shop-bought is it works out at half the price. I would guess they are no cheaper or not much cheaper than the lower cost brands, but those are so much less healthy, which brings us onto:
Healthier
Okay, we are not in kale territory here, but remember what we are up against. Beef mince of course has a good balance of protein, iron and fat your dog needs, in these smaller quantities, (and remember you are baking not frying, so some of the fat drains off). Carrots of course are a Good Thing: a rich source of fibre and vitamin A. The flour and egg are used for binding agents and in this small quantity are fine too, particularly if you use something like chickpea flour and good quality eggs. No meat processing or artificial additives are involved, and the ingredients are cooked from fresh. All good!
They work!
Oh man, dogs love them. An hour and a bit of my time every third Sunday is time happily spent, knowing the pleasure and results they help to bring. No chips please, keep it simple!
