On Sunday morning Caleb came in from the backyard holding a zucchini about the length of his forearm, set it on the counter next to the two from Friday and the three from Wednesday, and went back outside without a word. He didn't need one.
Our two raised beds do this every August. We plant two zucchini plants each spring because one always looks lonely in May, and every August I remember that one would have fed the whole street. The carrots come in at the same time, along with more beans and tomatoes than two people can reasonably eat. So far I've made zucchini bread for Caleb's birthday, a batch of fritters and something I called soup. Our neighbors have started taking the long way to their mailbox when they see me coming with a grocery bag.
Some of the extra goes to Hank, frozen into small treats he gets on the back step on hot afternoons. They're cheap, quick and mostly vegetable, which matters more this year than it used to.
Why these two
Plain zucchini and plain carrots are the two things from our garden that our vet has always been fine with for Hank in small amounts, with nothing added: no salt, no butter, no garlic, no onion. They're also mostly water and fiber. Since his knee surgery, keeping Hank trim has become part of the plan for his other knee, and he's held steady at 67 pounds since May. A treat that's mostly zucchini lets him feel spoiled without moving that number.
The tomato bed is another story. Caleb put a short wire fence around it in June, after Hank started nosing the plants, because the green parts of a tomato plant aren't something we want him chewing on. The beans he ignores. What sits well in one dog's stomach isn't a list I'd hand anyone else, so the vet who knows your dog is the right person to run new foods past.
How I make them
- Shred one medium zucchini on the big holes of a box grater. Not the forearm-sized ones, which are watery and full of seeds. Those go into bread or the compost.
- Wrap the shreds in a clean dish towel and wring it out hard over the sink. A surprising amount of green water comes out.
- Peel two carrots, slice them into thin coins, about an eighth of an inch, and steam them for four minutes so they bend instead of snap.
- Stir the zucchini into about a cup and a half of plain, unsweetened yogurt. I read the label every time for xylitol, which turns up in some "light" products and is dangerous for dogs.
- Spoon it into a silicone mold with small round cups, the same one I used for last summer's yogurt and blueberry drops, and press one carrot coin on top of each.
- Freeze for about four hours, pop them out and keep them in a freezer bag with the date written on it.
Two molds make 48 treats. Hank gets two on a hot afternoon, and on those days a little kibble comes out of his dinner bowl to make room.
The batch that went wrong
My first try this summer, I skipped the wringing and used thick raw carrot rounds because I was in a hurry. The treats froze into hard, icy pucks with a crust of zucchini water on the bottom. Hank took one very politely, carried it to the back step, licked all the yogurt off and then set the carrot back down on the step. Then the next one. When I came out to check on him there was a neat row of orange coins drying in the sun, like he'd been asked to sort them.
Thick raw carrot is also not a shape I love for a dog who gulps, so thin and steamed it is. That turned out to be the version he actually eats, carrot and all.
Mabel inspected the cutting board once, sniffed the pile of shredded zucchini and has abstained from the whole project ever since.
What it costs
A tub of plain yogurt runs about $3.50, and the vegetables were headed for the compost otherwise. Call it four dollars a batch. Our treat line has been $24 a month for two years, and this keeps it there. I also freeze a few bags of shredded zucchini, squeezed and portioned in half cups. In January it goes into his frozen Kongs with soaked kibble, and a little bit of August comes back out.
There are four more zucchini on the counter as I write this. Caleb says the plants are slowing down. He has said that every August since 2023.
