If you love your dog, it’s natural to want to spoil it as often as you can. So why not work on your own baking skills in the process? Instead of going out and buying factory-made dog biscuits and other treats you can save money and make your own from home with natural ingredients. The best thing is that you can find a variety of natural dog treat recipes all over the Internet made from food we as humans eat to stay healthy on a regular basis.

Yet, as much as you want to spoil your dog, there are a lot of things that shouldn’t go into your homemade dog treats even if you are using all natural ingredients for your dog treat recipes. Also, if your dog is overweight, even all of the natural dog treat recipes in the world won’t help your dog lose weight. So, if you have a chunky dog make sure to stray away from the treats and lean more towards exercise and restricting the dog’s diet.

Before baking your dog any treats, you should always be sure that your dog is not allergic to anything. For example, there are a variety of dogs allergic to peanut butter and since there are a lot of hommade dog recipes that incorporate peanut butter into the baking process you MUST make sure that your dog can have that kind of treat. A bulldog, for example, is usually allergic to many kinds of foods.

The following are a list of ingredients that you should NEVER use in your homemade dog treat recipes:

Chocolate: Most dogs are allergic to chocolate and you can never be too safe. Chocolate is a universal no-no for dogs. Even if your dog has eaten chocolate safely before, you should stray away. I remember a retired racing Greyhound named Maybell I had as a kid. My mother had cooked up a tray of fudge for the holidays and I took a plate into my bedroom. I had a few bites and put the rest under my bed for the night (I was like six, so I know that doesn’t make sense). The next morning I went to have some more fudge. When I checked under my bed, it had been eaten by, you guessed it, Maybell. She didn’t get sick at that time. So, the next time I sneaked Maybell some fudge I thought it was OK, but she ended up at the vet with a skin irritation due to the chocolate.

One alternative to chocolate that IS safe is Carob.

Onions: Onions can cause anemia in dogs and are highly toxic no matter what form they are provided in, this includes raw, cooked or dehydrated.

Raisins and Grapes: You would think that these would be OK to give a dog, but they can actually cause vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy and even kidney failure. This is a big no-no.

Macadamia Nuts: This can cause weakness in the muscles, lethargy, vomiting, loss of coordination, fever, tremors, pain in the abdomen and stiffness. The back legs of the dog can even become paralyzed. In most cases the dog will return back to normal in approximately 72 hours, but many people don’t realize this and euthanize their dogs without having to. This is definitely something you don’t want to go through with. So, whatever ingredients you’re using make sure that it doesn’t have Macadamia nuts in it.

Now that you know what not to use when looking up natural dog treat recipes you can be certain your dog will love its home-cooked treat prepared with love and great ingredients.