Hank can hear an apple being cut from the far end of the house. Not the fridge door, not the drawer. The specific crisp crunch of a knife going through the skin. By the time I've sliced it in half he's standing at the edge of the kitchen with his ears up, doing his best impression of a dog who just happened to be passing by.
On Saturday we drove out to an apple orchard, the way we do every September, and came home with a half peck of Haralsons, a bag of Honeycrisp, a jug of cider and a bag of cider donuts that did not survive the drive. Dogs aren't allowed in the rows at the orchard we go to, so Hank stayed home and got the first slice of the season as a consolation prize. He seemed to consider it a fair trade.
Fall is when our kitchen fills up with things he'd love to eat. Here's what he actually gets, and what he doesn't.
Apple slices
Two or three thin slices, a few times a week, cut from whatever apple I'm already eating. Before they go to Hank, the core, the seeds and the stem come out. The seeds contain compounds that aren't good for dogs, and a core is the kind of hard, chunky thing a gulper like Hank could swallow whole, which, given his history with things swallowed whole, is not an experiment we're running. The skin stays on. He prefers the tart Haralsons, which I find hilarious, because Caleb won't touch them.
Windfalls are a no, too. If we're ever somewhere with apples on the ground, he stays on a short leash. Fallen apples start to ferment, and Hank would eat a dozen before I noticed.
Plain canned pumpkin
A spoonful of plain canned pumpkin goes on his kibble a couple of times a week in the fall, or into a frozen Kong. The label has to say pumpkin and nothing else. Pumpkin pie filling sits right next to it on the shelf at Target in a nearly identical can, and it comes with sugar and spices, nutmeg included, that have no business in a dog bowl. I grabbed the wrong one once last fall and only caught it at home, reading the label at the counter before I opened it. Now I read it in the store.
An open can doesn't keep long in the fridge, so the rest goes into an ice cube tray, a tablespoon per cube, and then into a freezer bag. One $2.29 can lasts him about a month that way.
At our house, pumpkin is a snack and nothing more. If Hank's stomach is ever off for more than a day, that's a phone call to the clinic, not a trip to the pantry, and where pumpkin fits for any particular dog, if anywhere, is a question for that dog's vet.
Sweet potato chews
These are the one fall treat I make in bulk. Two sweet potatoes, scrubbed and sliced lengthwise about a third of an inch thick, laid on a parchment-lined sheet pan and dried in the oven at 250 degrees for about three hours, flipped halfway, until they're leathery and bendy rather than crisp. No oil, no seasoning, nothing else.
A bag of store-bought sweet potato chews runs $10 to $12. Two sweet potatoes cost about two dollars. My first batch taught me the catch: homemade chews still hold some moisture, and the jar I left on the counter grew fuzzy spots in about a week. The whole batch went in the trash. Now they live in the fridge and get used up within a week, or go in the freezer.
He gets one in the afternoon, and it takes him a satisfying few minutes of chewing on the back step while the maple drops its first leaves around him.
What we skip
- Pumpkin pie, pie filling and anything heavy on nutmeg.
- Cider donuts, caramel apples and apple crisp, for the sugar and butter, and because my apple crisp has raisins, which are a hard no for dogs.
- Apple cores, seeds and stems.
- The roasted pumpkin seeds from carving night, which come out of our oven salted.
- Jack-o'-lanterns within reach. Ours sit up on the railing of the front steps, out of nose range.
All of it counts toward his day. Hank is 67 pounds, and we'd like the number to stay right there for the sake of his right knee, so on snack days a little kibble comes out of his dinner. The fall extras add maybe $5 this month to our usual $24 treat budget, which I can live with.
Hank's take: the first slice of the season should be the whole apple.
