Our dog Mississippi is a 1 year old Border Collie/Labrador mix. She’s been out of the Oregon Humane Society for less than two months and for most of her time with us, she has had next to no patience. Trying to keep her occupied and out of trouble has been a full time job. We’ve gotten pretty good at keeping her busy.
Within the first couple weeks of bringing her home, I started making my own goo to stuff her kongs with. I love making her healthy treats and it feels good knowing that at least some of the food she eats isn’t filled with mystery meats or other yucky fillers. Have you read the ingredients of your dog food lately? Would you eat that stuff? Yuck. By making my own kong stuffing goo, I get to cook her something nice, which I love, I get to incorporate some of our leftovers, saving us money, and she gets to eat some quality food. She thinks it’s as good as caviar.
I fill the kongs with a nice helping of kibble then pack the rest of the kong with goo. We’ve got three medium kongs and one small kong and all of them get frozen solid so that when we give them to her, it takes her a good 1-2 hours to get through them. They have become and invaluable tool for us to enjoy a few moments of sanity each day. For a while, all her meals were fed to her this way. Now that she’s starting to calm down, she gets a half helping of her meals in a bowl and the other half in kongs. Whenever we have to leave her alone in the house, she gets some sort of treat like a kong, a watermelon rind, or a carrot. It makes our going away feel like less of a bummer for her. She generally seems more interested in her snack than in trying to leave the house with us.
Once Mississippi is eating most of her meals from a bowl, I imagine I’ll just spread a spoonful of goo into a kong, without adding kibble, as a fun afternoon snack for her. Similar to what you’d use peanut butter for.
I like her kong goo over any other products I’ve found. Some people recommend peanut butter, and I do like to give her a little bit every once in a while, but since we were giving her about 4-5 kongs a day for a while there, it was way too much peanut butter for her. Natural Balance makes a dog food roll but think it’s too dense and dry for kong stuffing purposes. It either crumbles apart or if you roll it into a ball, it’s so dense the dog can’t get it out at all.
My kong goo is really pasty, so when it is frozen, it’s very tough to get at, but as it thaws it makes for a nice gooey texture for the dogs to lick. I’m so proud of my kong goo, I sometimes wonder about selling it to New Leaf or local pet supply stores. The effort probably wouldn’t be worth the money but I do wonder. Who knows, maybe someday… I thought I’d share my recipe with you today. If you are in a similar situtaion; resscue dog with a lack of patience, trying to chew up all your belongings, give this goo a try.
For her ingredients, I try to keep them on the cheap. I buy my meats bulk from either Costco or the Safeway value packs and freeze them in single servings. I think the beef I used today was on sale for $1.99 a pound. Some of that meat supply gets turned into chili or pot roast for us. I will also use leftover meats and vegetables from our dinners and I add things from my own garden. The kale I added to this was extra stuff from our garden that I knew we weren’t going to be able to eat. I chopped it up and kept in the freezer. The mint and parsley are growing in my front yard. The carrots and potatoes came from a giant value bag. She eats carrots as a snack so we go through lots of them around here. The brown rice was bought from a bulk bin. The stock is homemade from our freezer.
You’ll need a food processor for this recipe. If you’ve got a small food processor like I do, you’ll have to blend your goo in batches. Have a large bowl handy. Leftover cottage cheese, salsa, mozzarella, etc plastic containers are great for storing multiple batches in the freezer.
Kong Goo Recipe:
About 16oz of beef, anything that’s on sale, cut into chunks
A cup or so of any leftover meat
4 carrots cut into big chunks
3 small potatoes or 1 large yam
3 pieces of celery, loosely chopped
1/2 cup frozen peas
1 cup of kale or other greens, stems removed and chopped
1 cup of brown rice
Handful of fresh parsley and mint
1-2 cups broth
Cook the brown rice in a rice cooker according to directions. Throw the beef, potato, carrot, celery, and about 1 cup of broth in a large pot or Crock pot and cook until the potatoes and carrots are tender. and the meat is cooked through. I usually just put the pot on the stove on a low temperature and go watch a movie.
Let ingredients cool until they are manageable. Blend rice with stew ingredients, kale, peas, and fresh mint and parsley in a food processor with some broth until smooth and pasty. Add just enough broth to create a nice gooey texture. Divide up your goo into several 8oz or 16oz plastic food containers. Keep one of the containers in the fridge and freeze the rest. You should end up with about 4 16oz containers. Thaw them as needed.
To use your goo, fill up a rubber kong or similar stuffable toy 2/3 of the way with kibble, top with kong goo and let freeze at least 2 hours. I probably use about 1/4 cup of goo per kong. Make sure you make your doggy do a command or two before giving them the kong. This recipe should give you enough kong goo for about a month of kongs.
Mississippi says: “I like sticks almost as much as mom’s kong goo!”