About three years ago, when I ended my enlistment in the Marine Corps, I was hired as a Sales Associate at the local Sears store.  The area that I lived was what I would call “back-woods” with some strange-ass people.  Some of these people would bring dogs into the store… inside of shopping carts.  Forget what you may think about breeders and purchasing a dog from breeders – those dogs in that cart would have gone to the pound if they were not purchased.  I walked up to the lady with the puppies in the cart, just to look at the cute, little, cuddly pups crawling all over each other, and there he was. The biggest one of all the tiny shih-poos.  At this point in time, I didn’t know much about dogs.  As a child, I never had a dog as a pet, only cats.  But when I saw this little guy, I knew I had to have him.  I left the store on my break and went to the ATM – I withdrew all the money required for the purchase and called the breeder.  Within moments, I had my first puppy.  The puppy who would win my heart over.  The puppy, who I would do everything for to keep him healthy and strong.  A few months ago, I decided I was going to make all of Prince’s treats from scratch, to ensure I knew what was going into them.  Pinterest has helped with numerous different ideas, but my go-to site is Pretty Fluffy – their recipes as appealing for me to look at as they are for Prince to eat.

Sweet Potato Pretzel Dog Treats

{recipe from Pretty Fluffly}

• 1 cup sweet potato puree
• 1 3/4 c whole wheat flour
• 1 tbsp. flax seed meal
• 1 egg (beaten), 1 tbsp. set aside

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the whole wheat flour and flax seed meal into a bowl.  Add in the sweet potato puree and the egg (except for the 1 tbsp. that was set aside).  Mix with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms a dough.  Separate the dough in half, and then in half again.  Once you have a quarter of the dough, separate that into 5 bite-sized pieces.  Roll the piece of dough into a tube (about the thickness of a pencil).  Take each tube and shape into a pretzel : make a U shape, twist the ends together and fold back.  Ensure that the ends are secured.  Place pretzel onto a lined baking dish  Repeat with all remaining dough pieces. Brush pretzels with the remaining egg.  Place in the oven and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Prince loves these.  As soon as he hears me going into his treat drawer, he runs over spastically (which he tends not to do).  I would give these a 5 star, just based on his reaction to the treat.