Victoria Laird has taken the task of baking pet treats for her dogs and horses and made it into an at-home business — Ultimate Pet Cookies.

Laird has been making pet cookies for about six years. She said there are pet treat food stores in Iowa City and Des Moines, but the travel time is not worth it.

“I’m not going to drive to Iowa City or Des Moines to buy dog treats,” she said.

Laird, author of the natural foods cookbook “America’s Favorites Naturally,” adopted some of her recipes to make them pet friendly.

“I took all of my favorite recipes from when I was a kid and modified them,” she said.

As an example, Laird uses whole wheat and honey instead of sugar and white flower.

For horse treats, Laird uses corn, oats, apples, molasses and pumpkin. She avoids using eggs or wheat to avoid digestive problems. She also avoids using salt in the animal recipes since salt is not good for dogs.

Laird said she can find many of the ingredients — such as carob, carob chips and rice flour — at health food stores.

Laird also adjusts the baking time for her pet treats.

“I bake them longer ... they’re drier,” she said.

Laird said she bakes the cookies for about 15 minutes and then turns down the oven heat to 200 degrees and bakes the cookies for another hour until they are dry but not brown.

“They love them,” Laird said of her dogs — Sophie, an English Golden Retriever, and Wilson, a Golden Retriever.

Sophie and Wilson are Laird’s eager taste testers.

Here are some of the treats Laird makes:

• Carob From Heaven Dog Cookies, (the Ultimate cookie reward!) which looks like a double chocolate chip cookie, but is made entirely from unsweetened carob and carob chips, with no cocoa or sugar products at all.