Pumpkin and Peanut Butter Dog Treats

Crunchy pumpkin and peanut butter treats for your furry friend! Five ingredients, and ready in 45 minutes. Make them some pupcakes next time!

I make a lot of treats for humans, but we should never forget our fluffy friends who deserve treats, too!

These pumpkin and peanut butter dog treats are easy to whip up, and will make you the most popular human at the dog park – I promise.

Tips for making pumpkin peanut butter dog treats

Grind your oats. They don’t need to be ground to a fine dust like flour (although you can if you want to), but using a food processor or grinder of some kind to get a mixture of whole and ground will be good enough. 

Measure your oats after grinding. You want 1 1/2 cups of ground oats, so you’ll end up with a bit less than you originally measure out. It depends on how fine you grind the oats, but I usually find that 2 cups of whole oats yields 1 1/2 cups coarsely ground oats.

Use natural peanut butter. Dogs’ tummies tend to be more sensitive than ours, so we want to be sure we’re giving them the best, most natural ingredients. Conventional peanut butters can contain junk like hydrogenated oils, sugar, and corn syrup.

Even better than natural peanut butter is a kind of peanut butter made specifically for dogs!

Use canned pumpkin puree, NOT canned pumpkin pie. I can’t emphasize this enough. Pumpkin pie mix would not be good for your pooch, so be 110% sure you’re using just pure pumpkin puree that has no preservatives.

I always have cans of Libby’s 100% Pumpkin around the house, but any brand whose only ingredient is pumpkin will do.

Use a spatula to fold together your wet and dry ingredients. I always whisk the pumpkin/peanut butter/egg together to get it smooth, and then switch over to a spatula when I add the oat mixture.

You can roll the dough onto a lightly floured surface… or not. I find that I get similar results when I just use my spatula to press the dough into a nonstick baking mat and eyeball it.

A floured surface will help with the stickiness factor, but if you’re in a rush or don’t have flour on hand it won’t be the end of the world. Plus, your dog really doesn’t care if they look perfect, ya know?

Don’t try to get super detailed cookie cutters. This isn’t like sugar cookie dough with super precise lines, so don’t try to use cookie cutters with lots of detail.

They don’t spread at all when they bake, though, so they will stay in whatever shape you make them.

You can make these big or small, totally up to you (and the size of the pooch you’re treating). If you didn’t want to deal with cookie cutters, you could even just turn out the dough and slice it in rows to make square treats of whatever size you want.

Because, again – your dog doesn’t care if it’s in the shape of a bone or a heart. We care… but they really don’t. They just want delicious noms.

These crunchy treats are perfect for when you don’t have any whole wheat flour around, but still need to whip up some snacks for your favorite floofers.

I’ve been making these for years, and the recipients are always overjoyed and drooly!

After you’ve made this recipe, please leave a comment below with a rating – and if you came from Pinterest, add a photo to the Pin of what you make to the pin to share your experience!

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