Making Bite Sized Treats the safe way

Whether you are coaching clients on training new-to-them dogs or helping your audience work on multiple serious behaviors, using a lot of treats can become costly and add to weight gain and digestive distress. 

A popular trend is making bite-sized treats in silicone molds, allowing you or your clients and followers to control calories and ingredients, helping dogs learn without affecting allergies, and even adding health benefits with the right recipe combinations. Using 0.5 - 0.8 inch treats also allows faster delivery than breaking up larger treats during a training session. 

Cooking treats in a home kitchen for use in high-bacteria growth temperatures (41°F (5°C) or warmer requires preparation, planning, and tracking to ensure the treats you or your clients and followers are making are as safe as they are delicious and rewarding. 

While tempting for your social media followers, cute dogs licking utensils or drooling in the background while you are prepping and cooking may render your treats unsafe. Slobber, fur, dirt, and lingering food particles can affect the microbiology of your treats, adding difficult-to-determine complications to your tracking while using homemade treats at (41°F (5°C) or higher. 

Additionally, long painted fingernails or using coffee or flowers as backdrops may earn more likes, but tiny particles of nail polish and dog-toxic flora or java could quickly end up in your dog treats, so it is critical for the safety of your dog treats to immediately clear, clean, sterilize, and allow your workspaces to dry before your preparation process. 

While the silicone bakeware often used to make bite-sized training treats is not considered to produce hazardous fumes and is deemed likely non-toxic by regulatory organizations (FDA being one), not all silicone is food-safe. So make sure your cooking molds are manufactured explicitly for baking at the maximum temperature you need and 100% safe for all the ingredients you plan to use. 

Starting your preparation with clean, sterile equipment and utensils, even brand-new silicone baking molds, is always essential. Dish soap combined with hot water at 180°F (82°C) for at least 30 seconds will kill potentially harmful microorganisms on your bakeware. Make sure to allow your silicone molds to dry away from other food before use. Water and moisture in your treats can adversely affect how long your training tidbits are safe for use outside the freezer or refrigerator. 

Like dog training is a skill, so is cooking in large silicone molds. Not only are they flimsy, requiring finesse and balance to get your cookware in the oven without spilling on your floor or inside your stove, but overfilling your baking sheets can make a huge mess. Spooning small amounts of your treat blends in the center of your cooking mat and slowly smoothing your recipes into tiny molds with a spatula will help reduce waste and make clean-up easier. You can also place a baking sheet under the silicone mold when moving it from your workspace into or out of the oven to give you stability with filled cooking sheets. 

Taking the internal temperature of teeny tiny treats can be difficult and inaccurate if you use raw meat, poultry, or fish in your recipes. Filling a couple of cups in a muffin mold with quality control treats will allow you to more easily place your thermometer in the center of larger treats to increase the likelihood that your temperature is correct. And, if your test treat temperatures are at or above FoodSafety.gov or the USDA’s guidelines for the appropriate amount of time with your recently calibrated thermometer, the probability that your tiny treats have reached the proper food-safe temperature is much higher. 

Additionally, before opening any of your ingredients, tracking batch numbers, brands, and your production date, especially if you are making treats for dogs who do not live in your home, would be prudent. If there is a recall on any food in your blend, you can notify your clients if you have signed up for the FDA’s recall notification list. 

A common misconception is that cooking kills every food-borne pathogen. Unfortunately, staph food poisoning (foods contaminated with the toxin Staphylococcus aureus bacteria) can still occur in cooked foods. When cooked to proper internal temperatures, you kill the bacteria itself. However, the toxins are still present in both staph and Bacillus cereus after cooking, even at high temperatures, and can still cause illness. So using proper handwashing procedures is imperative, and if you are sick, cancel your cooking day to prevent spreading viruses.

Additionally, even if you are an expert chef and have safely prepared many meals and treats for your family, friends, and pets, it does not mean your cleaning, sanitizing, and cooking protocols are safe for your clients and their pets. Remember that food-borne illnesses affect dogs and humans alike, with young children, infants, older adults, pregnant women, and people with weakened immune systems and chronic diseases most susceptible.

Assuming you are taking the above food safety precautions, it is also vital to triple-check the internal temperature needed for the meat, poultry, or fish (FoodSafety.gov or the USDA) you are cooking and to properly cool (checking with a thermometer) your dog treats from 135°F to 70°F (57°C to 21°C) in two hours or less, helping keep them as safe as possible for your clients and their dogs.

Because you are baking treats, it may be tempting to consider them safe for storage at room temperature. However, any water or moisture remaining (even if the appearance and feel of your dog treats are hard and crunchy) can be breeding grounds for mold. The only way to ensure your dog treats are shelf-stable is to have every variation (even if you only substitute one ingredient or the volume of that ingredient) you plan to make tested at a food safety lab. Alternatively, you can work with a food scientist to determine the proper additive or preservative to make your homemade treats shelf-stable, which would likely entail moving your treat production to a commercial FDA and or Department of Agriculture-inspected facility.

Given you likely enjoy training dogs and do not want to embark on the above business venture, you can store your treats in the refrigerator or freezer to keep them safe. When researching how long your treats are stored, use your most perishable ingredient to determine the best-by date. Ensuring your dog treats' safety is vital by using only cleaned, sterilized, and dry containers. 

Even though your treats look and feel like training bites you may purchase from the store, they are still highly perishable. You cannot follow the same out-of-refrigerator rules as dog treats manufactured in commercial kitchens. Instead, follow the two-hour rule. By tracking every second your treats are outside the refrigerator and discarding them after two hours of use in temperatures 41°F (5°C) or higher and one hour of use in temperatures 90°F (32°C) or warmer, you will keep you, your clients, and your dogs safe. 

Lastly, the 0.5-inch silicone baking molds are popular because even with one pound of your chosen protein, you can easily make 900+ dog treats. However, cleaning each tiny cavity so the cooking sheet is safe for use on your next cooking day can be tricky. Scrubbing each crevice multiple times with a toothbrush only used on that protein (color-coding works well) with dish detergent and hot water at 180°F (82°C) for at least 30 seconds (even if running your molds through the dishwasher) will help remove tiny crumbs and burnt edges that could render your next batch unsafe. 

Making dog treats can be fun and allows you to create recipes that your dogs, clients, and followers’ dogs will love and even offer health benefits. However, using the treats you make or recommend in high-bacteria growth temperatures of 41°F (5°C) or higher, more so at 90°F (32°C), is a big undertaking in a home kitchen without strict food-scientist-created sterilization and treatment processes. So following food safety guidelines every step of the way will help keep everyone safe.

Author Bio

Brandi Barker was a professional full-time dog trainer before launching Bark PouchTM dog treats. Her team follows a strict six-step sterilization process to ensure her fresh, human-grade treats are safe at any temperature. All five Bark PouchTM recipes are registered and in good standing with the FDA and Department of Agriculture. Brandi is ServSafe certified in Food Safety, makes every pouch in her dedicated, pristine commercial kitchen, and offers food safety cards for tracking your recipes.

Now that you've made yummy treats, learn how to use them to help your dog reduce their reactivity. Your next read should be What to do with a Reactive Dog: A Research-Based Guide for Change.