According to Gus, eating pumpkin cookies is way more fun than making them.

While perusing a bunch of fabulous blogs, we came across Green Your Dogs, an eco-friendly dog blog.  Right away, their recipe for DIY Organic Pumpkin Dog Cookies caught our eye.  There are only 6 ingredients in this recipe, many items probably already in your pantry!

We attempted baking homemade dog treats several years ago and these two words come to mind.  Epic fail.  The ingredient list was long, the process took forever, and Gus hated them.  Even though we used an uber cute candy cane cookie cutter (whoa, try saying that 3 times fast), he still wouldn’t eat them.  He took a bite, spit it back out, and looked up sadly at us with his puppy dog eyes.  Despite our disappointing past experience, we decided to give the new recipe a whirl.

See, we told you the ingredient list was short!  We adapted the recipe and used non-organic whole wheat flour and pumpkin.  A grocery store run for a couple organic ingredients wasn’t in the cards for us this morning.  We also halved the recipe, given Gus’s picky tendencies.

While the oven preheated, we mixed the flour, beaten egg, cinnamon, pumpkin, peanut butter, and salt.  You could even double the amount of pumpkin to punch up the fiber!

As we mixed, we looked down to see this curious dogger.

So of course we obliged his request to get in on the action.

He declined a lick of pumpkin, but was curious about the whisk, of course.

Once the ingredients were mixed and formed into a ball, it looked something like this:

Next, we rolled the dough to approximately 1/2-inch thick and made our first cut!

Gus even helped with the cookie cutter!

Before we knew it, they were all cut and ready to be baked.

Gus gave them a final sniff of approval before we popped them in the oven.

35 minutes later in a 350 degree oven, and voila!  Perfectly crunchy pumpkin cookies!

But, the most important question was, did Gus like them?

He loved them!  It was a total success!

Gus hopes you’ll try this recipe, or if baking isn’t your thing, Get Lick’d sells them on Etsy.  They were a snap to make and would make a great holiday gift!

Pumpkin Dog Cookies

Adapted from Get Lick’d DIY Organic Pumpkin Dog Cookies

• 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 organic egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 1 tablespoon organic peanut butter
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl, adding water if necessary
3. Roll dough into 1/2-inch thick sheet, cut with cookie cutter of your choice
4. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until hard
5. Serve to your beloved dogger and cross your fingers they like them!

Do you bake treats for your dogger?  If so, do you have any recipe suggestions?