Doggie Birthday Cake Recipe, Chaka and Some Very Opinionated Advice on Training a Puppy

Doggie Birthday Cake

It’s not the most attractive cake made from the Puppy Mold.
But your DOG will think it’s fantastic!

The main ingredients are liver and eggs, you can also add grated cheese.

Doggie Birthday Cake - This must be a Liver-Nose Rhodesian Ridgeback Cake 🙂

This cake is similar to my dog Chaka’s favorite treat.  I remember once when I was making a batch, I turned around to see him waiting patiently and expectantly behind me – next to a puddle of drool.  And I’d never seen him drool before.

Chaka’s favorite drool-inducing treat was actually crunchier than the cake recipe below.  I would cook the liver first, add eggs, cheese, wheat germ and a little flour, then spread it thinly on a cookie sheet and bake.

This is a pic of Chaka, he was absolutely amazing and is absolutely irreplaceable.

Doggie Birthday Cake

You’ll need:

◊   About 1 lb of chicken liver
◊   Three eggs
◊   ½ Cup of oatmeal (plain and uncooked, not flavored or sweetened)
◊   About 1½ cups of flour (I used equal parts rice and wheat flour)
◊   Cheese (optional)

The texture of this doggie birthday cake really isn’t like cake at all.  It’s very dense and is more like a very soft dog biscuit.

Prepare Puppy mold by brushing the interior with melted vegetable shortening, then dusting with flour.  Place Puppy Mold on cookie sheet to bake and to use to transport to and from oven.

Rinse chicken livers and cut into halves or quarters.  Whisk the eggs and add to the liver.  Add oatmeal.  Add flour(s) about a half cup at a time until it forms a thick batter.

Pour into one spot on the mold, to minimize air bubbles.  Bake at 350 °F / 180 °C / Gas mark 4  for about an hour.  Cake is done when it pulls away from the sides of the mold and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Allow cake to cool, remove from mold and cut or break into bite-sized pieces.

Optionally:

You can also add cheese, grated or cut into small cubes.

A small amount of garlic could also be added.  Too much garlic is not healthy for dogs, but a tiny bit is considered OK.

A note on flour:

I used rice and wheat flours.  I made rice flour by just putting rice in a food processor and grinding to a powder.

Since the most common food allergies in dogs are a sensitivity to corn or wheat you could probably use all rice flour if you don’t know if your doggie party guests have allergies or not.

That’s it for the recipe, if you want to hang around for my blathering of my opinionated views on raising a puppy, grab a cup of tea/ coffee/cocoa and make yourself comfortable:

My Very Opinionated Views on Raising a Puppy

I cringe when I see people do the dominance thing with their puppy to show them who the leader of the pack is by rolling them onto their backs, grabbing their scruff and glaring at them.  I also hate to hear people barking loud commands at their dogs as if they’re deaf.

I have had incredibly smart dogs and cats since I was little.  I firmly believe that this was partly due to just talking to them –in a normal voice.  By naming things and using lots of short phrases they could remember, it allowed them to have a huge ‘vocabulary’.   Remember, you’re basically teaching them a foreign language (in a manner of speaking).   Also, when you talk in a normal, soft tone to your puppy, they not only have to pay close attention to what you’re saying, but a loud, sharp command from you will get instant attention.  These should be saved for dangerous situations.

The even bigger plus to this is that you become the wise, respected one and your dog will look to you to know how to react to any new situation -or will want you to ‘name’ things for him.  Chaka would look at me, then pointedly look at the object he was curious about and then look back to me for a response.  He’d also do this if something was abandoned on the coffee table and he wanted to eat it.  He’d actually come upstairs to get me to show me something that my daughter had left and then politely sit next to it, look at me, then it, then back, asking if he could have it.

All ridgebacks are NOT countersurfers – to teach this, I left a piece of bread enticingly on the coffee table when he was a puppy, watched carefully and made a big deal out of him not touching it, then gave him a much yummier treat for being such a good boy.

The bread lesson was pretty easy because he already knew not to chew things that weren’t his toys.  All this took was consistency for just a short while.  When he first came home as a curious puppy, and would go to chew something, I would just say quietly,” No touch, not yours” and then say in a more silly, playful voice “This is yours!” and hand him one of his toys while telling him what a good boy he was for chewing it – you’ll have to have a toy readily available in all the rooms your puppy will be in, or go find one with him.  It was only a week, two at the most when he’d come into a room and immediately pounce on one of his toys.  He never destroyed anything as a puppy – and ridgeback puppies can do a lot of damage, some have ‘eaten’ couches!

My two most important other pieces of advice:

1. Make sure that adorable thing your puppy is doing now will still be acceptable to you when your dog is an adult.  Don’t allow it now unless you’ll be OK with it later.
2. Once means always.  You can’t let them do something “just this once”.  Consistency is very important.

I have lots more opinionated, smarty-pants advice, like how to make your puppy ‘bulletproof’, so it can handle new situations without being stressed or panicked;  getting them hooked on praise so they will always want to please you, etc., but I think this post is long enough already 🙂

Here are two of my favorite pictures of Chaka and me:

Chaka and me on the Port Jeff Ferry.  I think the loud ferry horn went off and startled us…or someone just told us a really good joke.

This is another favorite pic of me and Chaka.  The expression on his face tells me someone was walking our way with a dog or puppy.  He loved to meet other dogs and was always sweet and friendly.

What’s your favorite dog treat recipe?