Reading Labels And Real Ingredients

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Everything in there I can pronounce, which I love. But there's no weird thing that's going to help be a preservative or something that's been, I'm not quite sure what meal is when you read on a pack of a package, but it's that. Yeah. It could be anything.

Meet Your Hosts And The Mission

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Welcome to the Absolute Dog Sex in a Squirrel podcast. I'm Lauren Langman. I'm one of the world's leading dog trainers, and it's my mission to help owners become their dog's top priority. In each episode, you'll discover how to gain trust and communicate with your dog like never before, creating unbreakable bonds that make you the most exciting part of their world.

Omelette Breakfasts Dogs Actually Love

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Okay, so we're talking food, we're talking dogs, we're talking feeding our dogs great things, and that makes you feel good. It makes the dog feel good. Like we win at so many levels: longevity, health, wellness, a dog who has that sort of bright-eyed, bushy tail, healthy, and actually knowing we're doing right by our dogs.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

You love feeding dogs well. I absolutely do. And one of my favorite things to do for the dogs first thing in the morning, I love an omelette. So doing up some eggs, and it's really easy to do them for the dogs at the same time. I just am careful what I put in. So onion, obviously not for the dogs, but I do in the same frying pan everything else. Lots of colour into it. So I'll put a bit of pepper, I put a bit of spinach, I put some nice fresh herbs, so some parsley in there. Herbs. Herbs. Or herbs. Herbs. Herbs. Gotta be herbs. And I'll put my okay supplements as well. And the dogs really enjoy it. And I feel really good about giving them something like that first thing in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

So something like shroom, shroom really good for anti-inflammatory. What else is shroom good for?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

So shroom is really good for digestive health. It's good for dogs that might have a bit of anxiety. There's got five medicinal mushrooms in there. So it's packed full of really good things. Good for cardiovascular. I mean, the list goes on. It's I don't know about you. I also have it myself.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

I put up my coffee in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

And my omelet. So for me, there is no harm in it being in my omelet. So I love it in my omelet and I love a mushroom to be fair. So I am a definite mushroom girl. I like mushrooms. And so for me, I would happily, and my dogs will eat them mostly. I think sometimes they'll spit them out if they're too big or raw. So I do lightly cooked or just very lightly in the omelet. But again, really great spinach, adding some colour, the reds, the yellows, the greens, just obviously no onion. Finely chopped is better for my fussy dogs. Yes. Because they're a little bit fussy. But an omelette's a really nice way. Now, thinking of other easy, quick win-win, sort of easy food scenarios for our dogs.

Bone Broth For Gut Support

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah. We use brothy canine. But when there is time, maybe a nice winter sort of slow burner, what would you do?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

So I would make up my own bone broth. So I'll put up some I get from the local butcher. I try not to feed too much chicken, but I feel really good if I get like a nice chicken carcass from that's locally produced that's done organically. I'll put throw that into slow cooker. And any veg that I prep for myself. So I take the peelings off of my carrots, I take the leaves off of my any extra cabbage leaves. Broccoli, yeah, like the stalks and any of that. So I'll put some apple cider vinegar. Stick that on for 48 hours on low. It cooks itself. I don't have to worry about it. Throwing some herbs in rosemary, parsley, thyme, herbs, anything like that. The nutrients are all going to come out of what you throw in there into the water. And then when you cool it down and you feed it to your dog, it's going to really help them hugely. So bone broth's very good for intestinal health. So leaky gut syndrome, bone broth is going to help heal that. I'll freeze it into ice cubes. I'll put it into the omelet once it's cooked. I mix in their supplements with it. There's so many uses for it.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

And obviously, if you don't have time for bone broth, then brothy canine is a really nice option to actually shaker it, make it up. There you go. Wham bam. Thank you, ma'am. It's

Shaker Hacks For Hot Days

SPEAKER_01 4:06

there.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yes. And that's what I've been, it's been warm recently here in the UK.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

And you don't want to leave a soak cooker on for two days.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

No, absolutely not. So my go-to has been using my shaker and putting in it my brothy, some fresh canine. I've been putting probio in there, mixing a little bit of yogurt in as well, or kefir, kefir, kefir, whatever you want to call it. And then any of the other supplements. Bug, my absolute favorite at the minute, I'm getting eaten alive by the horseflies around here. And the ticks, you've had experience with the ticks recently, they're absolutely horrendous right now. So having that ability to mix up in a shaker is something that my dogs are going to drink and still getting their supplements into them. I froze a bowl, a okay nine fresh bowl last night. The dogs will get it this afternoon. Pop that cube ice cube out, and I mixed in some strawberries, some blueberries, a little bit of basil, and we put some cucumber in there. And that's going to be a lovely treat for the dogs to have in the garden this afternoon.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

It's so nice, like such nice options. All of those really, really nice.

Bake Simple Turkey Training Treats

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Now, you also like to make your own dog treats. What would be some of your favourite go-tos for dog treats? Because I think this is such a nice topic for people who are worried about what they're feeding, or maybe they just enjoy baking, or maybe they actually have to be careful because of a diet or an allergy. Like there are so many reasons to feed certain things. What would you say?

SPEAKER_00 5:24

So one I did recently, which turned out absolutely brilliantly, and I shared some with you. How did the dogs like them?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Absolutely loved them. And to be fair, I whilst I'm not eating meat, they smell amazing. Like I was like sniffing them, like I'm not eating meat and I don't want to eat meat. I don't want to eat animals. However, I really like the smell of them. And I'm I'm pretty good now at not eating animals. Like I'm I'm not eating meat pretty much all the time. But when I smell something like that, it smells quite tempting. A bit like smelling like bacon or sausages or like they smell good, like they smell really good.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

And I think when they smell good, they must be good for the dogs. Yeah. So what we put in those was some minced turkey. There was a bit of buckwheat flour, or you could put oat flour. You can make your own oat flour by taking rolled oats and then putting it through the blender. There was an egg, so it's eggs from here at Barrowland, fresh free range eggs. Really nice to have that.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Yeah, and I think that's worth knowing. Like when we're doing things like our omelets and stuff like that, our yellow is like bright yellow. Amazing. It's amazed to what you'll see. Like, I'm always horrified when I buy an egg from a supermarket. And for me, whilst I'm not going to go into a complete rant on chickens and supermarkets and everything else, uh, chickens should live free range. Yes. They should live doing what our chickens do. They they pecked. Someone said the other day, they don't they don't look like they've been fed. I'm like they never look like they've been fed. And to be honest, before we came up with like commercial chicken food, they'd have pecked the ground and found things. Yes. So to a degree, let them. Yeah, like let them go and be chickens. So I I our chickens don't have a feeder, our chickens are scatter fed, our chickens go hunting, we scatter it where we want them, we feed them away from us so that they don't hassle us. Like we're pretty on it for our animals generally. And we've just got a new pony. And um, same for him. He's quite sensitive around people right now. You can see his slight sensitivity around movement, and he's sort of not completely sure of people. Food will be one of our ways in. Absolutely. It's one of our trainability is susceptibility to reinforce when it's a skinner quote, it's a good one, it's one I'd always go back to.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Absolutely. So the treats that we made, we took some ground turkey, an egg, some buckwheat flour. I added in some blueberries that I had, and I just mashed it all up with a fork, spread it onto some parchment paper, the thickness that I wanted, popped it in the oven, and I was looking for a quick recipe because it's warm here right now. I just wanted something that was going to cook, be really easy, chopped it up with a knife when it came out of the oven. And I had some for my dogs and gave me. They loved it. And I know everything that's going in there. There is everything in there I can pronounce, which I love. Yeah. There's no weird thing that's going to help be a preservative or something that's been, I'm not quite sure what meal is when you read in the pack of a package, but it's that. Yeah. It could be anything. Yeah. So I'm really pleased with how they turned out.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

And you know what is in it.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

100%. Knowing what is in it makes a big, big

Silicone Mould Treats And Safe Additions

SPEAKER_01 8:00

difference. Now, how about your special treats, your magic treats, the treats you do all the time?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

How about those? So the ones that we do in the silicon molds. So you can get these little mini ice cube trays. And I I do buy them off of Amazon. And what I love to do is take, I'll do different mixes. And my one that I'm going to be making as soon as it cools down a little bit, so it'll probably be tomorrow morning. I'm going to take some liver, gonna pop that in the blender. We're gonna put some coconut oil, some egg, and we've got a free recipe book. We'll pop a link at the bottom of the podcast so that you guys can access some of these recipes. That would be really helpful, I think. Yeah, so that you guys can go home and and you guys at home can make these treats. And basically, I'll go into my fridge. I know what I've got in there. I've got blueberries, which I love putting in there. Blueberries are super food, packed full of antioxidants, really good for the dogs. I'll put some of my shroom in so shroom can be heated. And in fact, if you heat it, it increases the efficacy, which means it it increases even more useful. Yeah, it's the accessibility of all the goodness that's in shroom. I'll put some brothy in there as well. I'll add in some probably coconut water because I've got some in my fridge. And I think that's gonna be just so hydrating.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

It's so hydrating.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

It's gonna be really nice. It's gonna help it with binding. There's egg in there, and I will mix it up until it's the consistency of between cake batter and pancake battery so that it spreads nicely into the molds, and then I'll pop it in the oven. I wait until the the treats will pop up out of the mold. So you'll see them lift and they actually lift out of the mold a little bit. Bring them out of the oven. I let them sit and cool because I'll shrink.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

And they smell amazing. And what I love most is you almost can get away with putting anything in that you want to use. So whether it's a bit of spinach, a bit of blueberry, a little bit of like yeah, like something that's gonna make it like and so, like you said, you were having a fridge clear out, and I said, Oh god, I need to do that too. You can actually have a fridge clear out and you can use your like you can have an egg scramble, you can have your dog treats, and you can probably make a dinner too.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

And with Chat GPT and how clever it is right now, you're even using Chat GPT. We'll do a human food one later, as long as you want it, guys. Yes, but you can even go, look, I've got this, this, this, and this, give me a recipe.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Yeah, and I'm looking for I I want to keep my dogs healthy. I'm looking for really quick things to do. I'm looking for things that actually have been amazed how much money it saves me. So it saves me a significant amount of money making my own treats. Yes, there is a time aspect to it. But you enjoy it. I do, I really do. And it keeps you know what it does? It keeps me off my phone. Yeah, because your hands are on something else. So I'm doing something where I cannot actually use my phone because it's not the cleanest process. No, my hands do get a bit messy.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

And and it's almost like your own version of meditation, isn't it? Like treat making. 100%. So you're gonna do a liver-based treat recipe.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Yep, I'll be making that. You do have to be a bit careful because that is awful. Yeah, and too much awful, you have to know your dog. And if one of your dogs, you can't give too much liver to other dogs, then one of mine, I can feed as much liver, as much awful as I want, and it has absolutely zero, zero impact on her digestion. So you just need to get to know your dog and with anything, a little bit at first, yeah, you know how they respond to it.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

I look one of my favorite things to put in the treats is a little bit of garlic. So I know that there is a question about whether your dogs can have garlic or not, and there is information out there that says you should not feed your dogs garlic. But garlic is actually toxic to humans as well as dogs, given in a significant quantity, given in the amounts that you would eat and that you would put into your own food, I would apply the same amounts to my dogs as well. And that's going to ensure that they're getting the benefit from the garlic without getting too much of it. To be honest, if I put too much garlic in, I honestly don't think my dogs would eat it, just like I wouldn't eat spaghetti sauce that had too much garlic in it. But it's really good for their cardiovascular health. So I love putting in my treats now. It's probably why they smell so good. Oh, they smell so good, like so good. Crust into it, mix it up, and that health benefit is massive for the dogs.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

It just and and for me, I would not ever eat liver. I would not, I mean, I don't eat meat now at the best of times, but liver, I really wouldn't, but they smell so good. Yeah, they do. They smell really good. Now, with those, what I love because you regularly, I'm very lucky, Michelle regularly makes some of those for me. The cool thing is that you they're so good frozen. So I actually use them in the summer when I was training last week. Most of the treats I was using were frozen. Yes. So that by the time I actually had them in my hands, they were fresh again.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Absolutely. And that's really important as well. These are homemade, they're natural. If you don't freeze them, they are gonna mold.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Yeah, yeah. So they don't have the preservatives, they don't have the this will last 20 million years because it's got emulsifiers and all of the other sprays on them and things that are gonna make them last because they're basically cardboard.

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Yes, you need your better, especially the heat we've got right now.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

I think, yeah, freeze them. I mean, even I don't want to talk to you too much about the human treats right now, but there are so many human treats we can talk about. I literally, just before we started, I grabbed a human sweet treat out of the freezer because I just got back in and I was like, need a sweet treat, but it's so great because it's in the freezer. Yes, they're really cool, really healthy, really brilliant sweet treat. I'll have to give you one on the way out because they are so delicious. Peppermint, absolutely delicious, lovely, really refreshing on a day like this. And at the same time, they're brilliant because they sit in the freezer. Yep. So they don't get like sticky or warm or like they don't last too long and sort of sat in fridges. So it's really handy from that that point of view.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Absolutely. And I I I made the mistake training one day, and I I tend to use silicon zip top bags. Yeah. I um I left it on the bench outside where we came inside to do a little bit of theory when we were training the dogs. Yeah, I came outside, I was absolutely amazed. It was only a couple of hours. The treats have molded.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

And and for me, worse than that, sometimes I'll have I'll see the like flies have been on them. Oh god, yeah. Like the flies are absolutely horrific. I was competing out in um America, and when I was competing out in America, oh my god, the wasps, they were so on me. And you'd have lived in hot countries before of people coming from Bermuda. So you'd have known the same. I get that you probably went into the fresh treats that we would use here back then. But if you were out there with the treats we use, you'd be in a mess, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Oh gosh, yeah, there'd be flies everywhere. There'll be bees and and different creepy crollies all over it. And that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

That tells me that what we're feeding is really if the if the rest of the small world wants to get involved, the rest of the critters want to get involved,

Probiotics And Checking The Poo

SPEAKER_00 14:18

it must be good.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Now, I know one of the things you talk about is probiotics and making sure that so wherever we can we add probiotics, especially to the full things. Like you could add it to bone broth once it's cooled, yes, but not obviously when bone broth is hot. Now, one of the things you talk about is basically making the environment so good that the bad guys can't get in. I don't know if you want to elaborate on that, but still in a really simple way, because I think it's nice to make sure that everyone's on the same wavelength.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

So we want to make sure that our gut health, our intestines, the microbiome in there, all the good guys are so healthy and so proliferic that there just is no space for the bad guys. So things like the parasites like theardia, worms, things that your dog might ingest that want to take up residence in your dog's gut, if their microbiome is really healthy and flourishing, there's no space for it. There's no room for it to move in. So feeding things like kefir, Greek yogurt, my preference is kefir, if you can get a hold of it, because it's got three trillion probiotics in it. Greek yogurt's really good, five trillion or sorry, five million probiotics. And it's massive. So variety is really the key. So lots of different foods feeding your dogs. So you want to make sure they're getting the prebiotics, things like rocket, sweet potato, things like that. You just reminded me, Rocket is going on my shopping list.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Yes. You know what? I'm getting my shopping list now. You you keep talking. I'm writing Rocket on my shopping list. I don't even know that.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

So hit the different varieties of colors. So all those colors of the rainbow. Watch out for things that your dogs can't eat. So no grapes, no raisins, no onion, things like that. But trying to get those fruit and vegetables in watermelon right now, mango, banana, blueberries. I managed to get a hold of some purple sweet potatoes. Yes. The bulk of those was going to me, but I will happily share with the dogs. And what I'll probably do is take the peelings off the sweet potato and put that into a bone broth. So good. Color, color, color, color and variety. And it doesn't have to be every single day. It can be three or four times a day. It can be once a week. And that's going to help your dog's gut flourish. If you can add in spices and you can add in herbs, that's also going to help your dog out. And just trying to make sure that your dogs are really healthy. And one of the surefire ways to check that your dog is really healthy, and it's an interesting one. I always feel a bit awkward mentioning this to clients that we deal with. Make sure you're looking at your dog's poos.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

And you don't need to feel awkward. I think everyone around dog owners, like it's just it's a really normal thing. So for me, if I see a pew uh a pew, a pew, if I see a poo with like mucusy, or if I see it maybe if it's too firm or if it's too loose and like liquidy, like that, those are all indicative of we can change something in our dog diet.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

Yes. Yep. And we we have conversations about the quality of our dog's poo.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

And think the big thing for me would be if your dog isn't having probiotics, like for me, I add a lot of probio to my dog's daily food to make sure that they have that. And then I go every everything else I can that's natural that I can add to it that's that's not been processed, I try. Yeah. But the bare minimum is probio. Um, I know you use probio as well. Absolutely. You like the smell of it, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 17:14

I do. I love the smell of it. It smells like cotton candy. So I think it's absolutely um amazing. And I definitely notice a difference in my dogs when I do use probio. So I'm no different than anybody else. Sometimes I have weeks where I'm better with feeding the supplements. I have weeks where I'm not quite as on it. But the more practice, the more rehearsed I get at it, the more little hacks I come up with.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

So this morning I did a smoothie for me and I put my probio in it for myself because it's so much easier than pulling pot capsules. And so I'm much preferred to pulling pot capsules. So I just put a good spoonful in for me and it goes in my smoothie. In fact, you had it last week. Oh no. And you had

Freezer Cubes For Supplements

SPEAKER_01 17:46

smoothie. It tastes like smoothie. It's all made in a human grave factory. Anyway, basically, what we're saying to you is enjoy doing food with your dog.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Absolutely. And one of my ways that I ensure that I absolutely get these foods into my dogs is I get freezer trays and I'll get a big, huge tub of Greek yogurt or kefir, and I will mix up my supplements into it. And I've got it, I'll put it in a blender, I'll make a smoothie, I'll put my shrimp, my probio, my brothy, my bug, absolutely amazing, absolutely love bug plaque, prime, any of the supplements, mix it in together, and I pour it into ice cube trays. And then, like you did, where you grabbed yourself a sweet treat from the freezer, I just give one of the dogs a cube.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

And they're having a cube of yogurt, effectively really, really tasty for them and equally has got all the good stuff. Now, I know that you do a bake off.

Devon Dogs Bake Off And Farewell

SPEAKER_01 18:38

I know that we'll do a very quick plug for your bake-off, Michelle. How does someone join? What are they looking for? And what are they going to get out of it?

SPEAKER_00 18:44

So once a month, we do two and a half hours of basically cooking for our dogs. And if you go onto the Devon Dogs website, they're Devendogs.co.uk. We'll pop a link below. We run them the generally the second or third week of every month. They're on a Saturday evening, 6 30 to 9 p.m. UK time, and they're run via Zoom. We'll send you out the recipes and we get a variety of options for people. Some people just join and stay at home and sip their drink of wine. They just watch. And then we've got glass of wine. Absolutely enjoy. And then we've got people who bake along. And the idea is just to show you guys how you can be prepping foods for your dog. So I'm thinking lovely Pam. Pam just fakes everything. She's amazing, isn't she? She does. She does. And she's really good about sharing as well. That's the big thing. I'm passionate about you sharing this information with other dog owners as well. We made on the last bake off that was just Saturday, we did kimchi for dogs. So I'm really excited about trying out what we made. And it's got another two days that it's going to sit for. And then I can't wait to see what the dogs think of it. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

It's amazing. So high five food with dogs. You can improve your dog's health. You can improve your longevity and wellness too, because it's going to make you happier. We promise to do a food for humans too. And guys, make sure that you're sharing this podcast all over the place. Michelle, you love it, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Oh, I absolutely love it. If you can't tell, I'm a bit passionate about being healthy, sharing health with my dogs, and making sure they're as fit as they possibly can be.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

You guys are going to see more of this, and we appreciate you spending your time with us. Make sure you share it, and we'll see you real soon.