Howloween Treats for Your Puppy!

Our puppies deserve to enjoy the spooky festivities too! Your puppy already knows all the tricks, so why not make them some DIY Halloween treats?

Howloween is coming! We scoured the interest to curate a list of the spookiest and cutest treats your puppy will love. Best of all, they are made up of wholesome ingredients that pups love, and are easy to make right at home!

Apples, pumpkins, peanut butter oh my! Puppies love these flavors and the best part is they are totally safe for your puppy to enjoy. 

Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Dog Treat!

Recipe courtesy of AllRecipes.com user Kelly

This one is packed with flavors puppies can’t get enough of! We love it because it’s simple and takes only a little preparation to get the finished batch! 

Image Courtesy of AllRecipes.com user Kelly

What you need:

• 2 ½ cups whole wheat flour 

• 2 eggs 

• ½ cup canned pumpkin

• 2 tablespoons peanut butter

• ½ teaspoon salt

• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Start by preheating your oven to 350°F. Combine the flour, eggs, pumpkin, peanut butter, salt, and cinnamon in a bowl. Once all your ingredients have been mixed, slowly add in water to make the dough workable but it should remain on the dry and stiff side. Then, roll out your dough into a ½ inch-thick roll and cut into ½ inch pieces. The best part is you can make any shape with a cookie cutter of your choice! Assemble your pieces on a cookie baking tray, and bake your pup’s treats for approximately 40 minutes or until they are hard.

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Howloween Skeleton Bones

Recipe courtesy of Irresistible Pets blog

What couldn’t be more Halloween-themed than treats in the shape of bones? If you are feeling like a cute icing project, this is a great treat to make for your puppy!

Image courtesy of Irresistible Pets Blog

What you need for the bones:

• ​​2 ½ cups of non-bleached flour or substitute with whole wheat flour

• 1 Egg

• 1 cup of water

• 1 chicken bouillon cube

• Bone-shaped pan

What you need for the icing:

• 1 cup non-fat plain yogurt

• 1/2 cup water

Preheat your oven to 350°F and spray the cookie pan lightly to prevent the bones from sticking. Next, combine all of the ingredients and form a dough ball. Take a small inch-sized piece and roll it out into a long tube, about the length of your hand and press it into your bone-shaped pan. At this point, stick them into the oven to bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown and cracking (the effect looks like real bones!) then remove and let them stand until they are cool. In a bowl, mix your icing ingredients until there are no lumps. Dredge your bones in the icing and place them on wax paper. Put your bones in the freezer for about one hour or until the icing is frozen. 

Pumpkin Spice Dog Treats

Recipe courtesy of vintagekitty.com

Feeling like making something healthy and sweet treat? This recipe is great if you want some extra treats for your puppy after Halloween or if you have more than one four-legged best friend at home!

Image courtesy of vintagekitty.com

What you need:

• 5 tablespoons vegetable oil

• 3 teaspoons xanthan gum

• 1½ cups canned pumpkin puree

• 1 cup unsweetened apple sauce

• 4 eggs

• 1 cup cooked sweet potato, mashed or riced

• 4 teaspoons pumpkin spice

• 2½ cups coconut flour

• 1½ cups rice flour

• 1½ cups almond meal

• raw pepitas

 In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the oil and xanthan gum. Next, add in the pumpkin, applesauce, sweet potato, eggs, and pumpkin spice and combine everything until smooth. Fold in the flours and almond meal using a spatula and then knead the dough until it is thoroughly mixed. Shape the dough into disks, cover with plastic wrap, and then chill overnight.

When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 250°F. Roll your dough out to a thickness of 1/4 inch between two pieces of parchment paper. Using your own shaped cookie cutters, make cutouts from the dough then place them on parchment paper-lined cookie sheets. Bake for two hours and rotate the pans every 30 minutes. Let your cookies dry and test them by snapping one in half. 

Candy Corn Frozen Dog Treats

Recipe courtesy of 12tomatoes.com user Decatur Macpherson

Does your puppy love froyo? These frozen pops are super cute, delicious, and a refreshing take on Halloween treats!

Image courtesy of 12tomatoes.com user Decatur Macpherson

What you need:

• 1-2 small bananas

• 1 cup plain non-fat yogurt, divided

• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin

• silicone ice cube tray

Fill up your ice cube trays with 1/3 full with plain yogurt, then place the molds in your freezer. Freeze for about 1-2 hours, or until yogurt is set. In a small bowl or glass, mix together 1/2 cup yogurt with canned pumpkin. Stir the mixture until combined, then pour over frozen yogurt in ice cube molds, making sure to leave space at the top for the third layer. Return your mold trays into your freezer for another 1-2 hours, or until set. Next, mash banana(s) in a small bowl and stir in any remaining yogurt, then pour over frozen pumpkin layer in mold. Return to your freezer until they are set. When they are ready, you can simply pop them out!

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Apple Crunch Pupcakes

Recipe courtesy of Sarah from Lola the Pitty

Apples are a puppy favorite! These pupcakes are full of apple flavor, and you can modify them into different shapes, add spice, and decorate them any way you’d like!

Image courtesy of Sarah from Lola the Pitty

• 2 cups water

• ¼ cups apple sauce (I used Mott’s Natural)

• ¼ tsp vanilla extract

• 1 egg

• 4 Tbsp honey

• 4 cups whole wheat flour

• 1 Tbsp baking powder

• 1 cup chopped apples (about 1 apple)

 Start by preheating your oven to 350°F. In a large bowl combine water, apple sauce, vanilla, egg, and honey together. Next, combine whole wheat flour and baking powder and stir into the wet ingredients. Fold in the chopped apples. Lastly, spoon the mixture into greased muffin tins and bake for 35 minutes. Let them cool before giving them to your puppy! 

For extra Halloween spirit, you can ice these treats with dog-safe icing or yogurt!

 Are you trying any of these recipes? Do you have one you love? Share it with us in the comments!

With every homemade recipe and utilizing ingredients from home, if you are unsure or concerned, reach out to your veterinarian with questions whenever you plan to feed your puppy something outside their regular diet! 

What are some recipes that you love to make for your puppy at home? We love sharing! Leave us a comment below!

Have a question about how to keep your puppy safe and happy this Halloween and during the holidays? Our trainers help new puppy owners understand how to prepare your puppy, training tips, and socialization routines you can use to help your puppy feel comfortable during Halloween, plus more useful tips!

Join us every Wednesday at 1 pm PT on @thepuppyacademy Instagram for our weekly live q&a! 

Note: These are curated recipes that do not belong to The Puppy Academy. All links have been included in each section title to the original source!

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Puppyhood Made Easy for New Owners: Beyond Puppy Training Basics!

Your puppy is growing up and that means they will be experiencing adolescence! Yes, puppies go through it too! Here’s how to manage their changing hormones and continue to improve their obedience and behaviors!

Puppies, much like their human counterparts, experience adolescence. It’s a great time where they’ve left their very young new puppy phase, from still trying to figure out basic things like learning their name, potty training, and who their family is, and have moved on toward becoming confident young adult pups. Now they can do more things with you that they were still too young for, but adolescence brings its own set of challenges. Your puppy might try to test their boundaries, may not listen, and put your patience to the test. Don’t panic though! This time in their life offers a great opportunity to solidify their foundational basic obedience training so it engrains into the rest of their life.

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From Puppy to Teen Dog 

So how do you know if your puppy is in their adolescent phase? Puppies will actually go through about three different adolescent phases starting at five to six months of age. The second may occur around the ten months to one-year-old mark where your puppy is almost at their complete adult size. And their last phase can go up to two years old so that entire year, give or take a few months depending on your puppy’s breed, can be considered adolescence!

Aside from age, you may simply start to notice differences in their behavior. It could be your puppy is engaged in their training then suddenly lose interest and ignore you. They might start to not listen to obedience commands you’ve trained them and they’ve successfully completed in the past. You might notice some snippy-ness or stubborn-like behaviors, or your puppy is more inclined to be independent than look to you for activity or guidance. And your puppy might show some more energy and act out impulsively i.e. counter-surfing or chewing on things they shouldn’t.

How to Manage Adolescence

The best way to manage these new teen behaviors is to reinforce their basic obedience training; avoid the inclination that they are “doing great” or “already know everything” and teeter off the consistent puppy training routine. Structure comes through crate training, “Place” command training, maintaining your puppy’s daily schedule when it comes to going out to relieve themselves, going down for naps, specific playtimes, and puppy training with food...all of these will need to be maintained to help your puppy work through their changing hormones and strengthen your leadership role with your puppy.

You may need to go back to using more food rewards if your puppy is being stubborn and not listening to commands to help reengage their focus on you. As an adolescent, they are also testing your ability as their leader so maintain that role by really bringing your puppy’s attention back to you whenever they’ve lost focus or seem more interested in something else.

Crate Training: Your puppy’s crate is one of the most useful tools in your arsenal. It’s not just for getting your puppy on a specific potty schedule or getting them to sleep through the night. Your puppy’s crate will also be indispensable when they’ve reached adolescence and you need to create a physical boundary, provide them with a safe, controlled space to settle and rest, and a space where they can simply exist and hang out while at home. 

If you notice that you’re adolescent puppy is suddenly chewing on furniture again, or so excitable by everything happening at home and can’t seem to settle, have them go to their crate. When you initially started crate training your puppy prior to six months of age, you may have started with short intervals anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes of alone time in the crate. As an adolescent, you can begin to work up towards an hour, allowing them to relax and calm any over-stimulated energy.

“Place” training: Along with your puppy’s crate, their place cot or bed combined with using the command “Place” creates a physical boundary and location for your puppy to target and remain. Again, if your puppy is “acting out” their place is a great tool to have them work out some energy, and most importantly, redirect them from whatever they shouldn’t be doing! 

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What can You Expect to Work on with Your Teen Dog

Adolescence provides a great opportunity to start to challenge your puppy’s growing skillset!

During this time, you can start to introduce more advanced outdoor obedience and work using a long line. Your puppy will have a full laundry list of obedience skills that they know how to do so challenge them to work on sequences of commands rather than a few at a time.

Most of their puppy training has used food as a reward. We even mentioned that during your puppy’s adolescence phases to incorporate more food as a way to get their attention! Actually, this is a great time to start to wean them off of being rewarded every time, once you have their focus. The reality is, you won’t always carry a treat bag with you so you want your puppy to listen regardless.

Help wean your puppy off of food by working with them through longer sequences of commands. For example, you can use “Place” patterning routines asking your puppy to go to their place, and have them, “Sit”, “Stay” then “Come” to you and even go to another place target. You can repeat this pattern of sequences a few times before rewarding your puppy with food, slowly growing the amount of duration between performing a routine and their reward.

Not only will you work to wean your puppy off of food rewards but this is an opportunity to remove other support tools you’ve utilized to help them work through commands: leash-pressure, luring with food and interchanging verbal and hand signals for commands instead of using both every time.

What to Keep Working On As Your Puppy Grows into an Adult Dog

In new situations, such as bringing your puppy to a new park or to a friend’s yard, your puppy’s obedience may need to fall back on the full support of food, leash pressure, luring, and verbal and hand signals you were using early on in their puppy training. But this doesn’t mean that they have regressed in their training or that you failed! It’s normal for your puppy to test their boundaries all over again in new settings, whereas at home or a place they know, your puppy already built up foundational obedience behaviors and muscle memory so they know what to expect. 

Keep Consistent with Their Puppy Training

As your puppy continues to mature, you should continue to practice their basic obedience, building their duration, distance, and working through distractions. Maintain regular puppy training schedule as you normally would in each new setting you bring them.

Go Back to Rewarding Before Weaning
While it may sound like we are telling you to take a step back, you aren’t! Go back to rewarding your puppy for each command, especially in a new place or when you begin long lead work outdoors. You need to help build up their foundational obedience in those settings as they work through a new stimulus that’s pulling their focus. When you’ve had a few sessions with their regular amount of food reward and other support techniques, then start to take a few away. 

Don’t Throw Away Your Puppy’s Daily Schedule

Some owners make the mistake of loosening up on their puppy’s daily schedule because their puppies are close to that ten-month-old or year mark. Many times, around this time frame, puppies may start to have accidents in the house or do other behaviors that they normally wouldn’t. Your puppy’s daily schedule is their guidebook and how they know what to expect and what’s expected of them! Maintain their regular potty breaks, feedings, playtime sessions, downtimes, and training sessions all throughout their adolescence.

Above all, remember that your puppy training is working and to rely on the work that you’ve already put in place to help you get through more challenging days! Your puppy is growing up and becoming an adult, they will continue to look to you for leadership and guidance!

Is your puppy showing signs of adolescent behavior? Do you feel like you need more help understanding how to work through their changes and adapting their training? Join us every Wednesday at 1 pm PT on @thepuppyacademy Instagram for a live trainer Q&A!

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