A Little Bit of Baking...

This week I came across a recipe for pumpkin puppy treats and since I had all the ingredients in my kitchen I decided I'd bake some healthy, all natural 'cookies' for Yoshi and Wafer. I can't believe the price of dog treats, especially the healthier 'natural' varieties, so discovering how easy these were to make was a great bonus and the puppies just love them!



I found the recipe on Facebook. It had been shared from John Hammer's page by a friend. Here it is if you're interested in trying it.

DOG TREATS

Ingredients:

2 eggs
1/2 cup canned pumpkin (pure pumpkin...not the sweetened pie filling!)
2 tbsp dry milk
1/4 tsp sea salt
2 1/2 cups brown rice flour*
1 tsp dried parsley (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350ºF
In large bowl, whisk together eggs and pumpkin until smooth. Stir in dry milk, salt and parsley. Add brown rice flour gradually, combining with your hands to form a stiff, dry dough. Turn out onto lightly floured surface (use brown rice flour) and if dough is still rough, briefly knead and press to combine.

Roll dough between 1/4 - 1/2" thick, depending on your preference and use cookie cutter to cut out bone shapes, gathering and re-rolling scraps as you go.

Place cookies on a cookie sheet (no greasing or paper is necessary). If desired, press a fork pattern on biscuits before baking.

The puppies happily sit pretty
to earn a cookie reward!

Bake for 20 minutes, then remove from oven and carefully turn them over. Bake an additional 20 minutes on this side. Allow to cook completely before storing in an airtight container or letting your dog sample them.

*Brown rice flour gives the cookies a nice crunch and promotes better digestion, especially for dogs who do not tolerate wheat well.

Makes about 75 small biscuits or 50 medium biscuits. I ended up with about 120 using the little bone cookie cutter I have and these are a perfect size for training treats (broken in half for Wafer). 

Meet Wafer-Foster Puppy #3

As most of you know, I foster future Dog Guide puppies for the Lion's Foundation of Canada Dog Guides. On February 10th we welcomed home our third foster puppy, Wafer. She is another yellow labrador retriever and she came home on her 7 week 'birthday'. We still have Yoshi, now 9 1/2 months old, and she will likely not be returning to Dog Guide 'University' for her formal training for another month or two. If you'd like to know more about Dog Guides or fostering a future Dog Guide, please click on the above link. Yoshi and Wafer are 2nd cousins.

Getting ready for Wafer's first car ride...she curled up and slept with Yoshi the whole way home!

Yoshi's never far from her new 'little sister'.

Being my first winter baby, I made some sweaters to keep Wafer warm when
I had to take her outside for 'bathroom' chores. This sweater was made using
a free pattern from http://www.mimiandtara.com

Hey Wafer, are you sure you want all of that?
The shirt pictured here is a little 'onesie' that I cut off and hemmed.

Sleeping in her crate with Lampchop.

Wafer's first shopping mall excursion.

Escalators are one of the many things to which future Dog Guides must be exposed.
"Mom, is this the cookie machine Yoshi told me about?" asks Wafer

Sitting pretty!

Napping together.

Yoshi seems to always be close to her new baby 'sister'.

Blowing raspberries on Wafer's belly! Haha

Baby it's cold out here!

More snuggles...Yoshi's sharing her bed with Wafer.

Another shopping mall outing with my Mom, Yoshi and Wafer.

Yoshi tried on her hockey buddies jersey.

Just hanging out...

Thanks Auntie Marilyn for my pretty name tag!

If I try really hard I can jump like a kangaroo!

Getting sleepy...

Yoshi likes to be close, even when Wafer is learning to nap in her crate!

DLP Week 4: How a Page Can Take Over...

This week on Art to the 5th's Documented Life Project, the Art Challenge was 'Writing' and the journal Prompt was 'Words with Friends'. I always start my spread by setting up the journalling boxes along the right side of the spread so that I can 'document' my life for the week even as I work through the process of creating the art on the rest of the page. That way there is no pressure to hurry the art along and theoretically even if I don't finish it during the week I can always come back to it without falling behind on the actually recording of my dailies.

Because of the challenges, I pulled out washi tape that was postage related or 'writing like' and then put some actual postage stamps to use.

I have several stamps that contain various kinds of scripts so I were used to get me started filling the blank white pages.

Using two different blues and a purple pen-all I wrote 'letters' to friends, family and even myself in the spaces left by the stamps. I quickly began to overlap the script areas and stamped script in all different directions.

 I then adhered some bits of collected paper: part of an envelope in which a letter was sent to me by a friend, a little gift card envelope and a beautiful little tree. The diamond shapes were cut from a paper napkin (I take the layers apart and only use the top, printed layer).

A bit of black was added in the form of some bold black circles. These were inspired by some art I saw in a display window of a clothing store in a mall.

At this stage I started adding layers of paint, doodles and collaged elements and words. It's during this process that the page kind of took over and went from being all about letters to being more about books and words.

Because of one of my dailies, in which I wrote about the 'puppy pants'* I made using a pattern I found on this wonderful site called Mimi & Tara: Dog Clothes Patterns, I made a tag that includes a couple of pictures of Yoshi modelling her fancy pants. The tag is tucked into the little gift card envelope.
*(Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides breeds their own puppies, and since the females in Yoshi's litter are being considered for the breeding program, they are all being kept in tact until after they are brought back to the training school. As such, she may go into heat while she is still with me.) 

Yoshi's new friends...

I seem to be in a bit of a dry spell right now as it relates to my art, but I'm having a lot of fun with Yoshi, our current Future Dog Guide puppy.

I just had to share a video with you.  My husband and I often hand feed the chipmunks at our cottage, so the chipmunks in this video are very used to us, but surprisingly they were okay meeting Yoshi, only 8 weeks old in these shots!

Click here to see video.

New Beginnings...

The next few days will bring some important new beginnings for my foster puppies. 

Dime will be leaving our home on Monday to go off to 'Puppy University'.  He's been chosen to 'major' in autism assistance. I'm so proud of the amazing dog he's growing up to be, and I know he's going to do a great job helping his special person!  

He'll spend the next 4-6 months in training to learn how to do his important life work. While at school he'll also have down time to play with his classmates and get lots of loving from the people working with him too!

And this little cutie, Yoshi, will be coming into our home for the first stage of her training tomorrow.

In this photo she's only 4 wks old, but when she comes home to us she'll be almost 7 wks.

I'm excited that Dime will be able to help her make the transition, and give her snuggles, as she adjusts to her new home.

I'm sure the two of them will have a great weekend together before we take Dime off to school on Monday.

Have I mentioned how much I love this wonderful opportunity to give back by fostering these amazing puppies.  What they do for their eventual partner is life changing, and I'm so happy to be able to be a part of this process!

Repurposing a Quilt...

Many years ago, I designed and made a quilt that was used for the quilt guild's block of the month.  Although I liked the idea of the blocks, I never really liked the little quilt I had made with them.  So, this weekend I decided to repurpose it into an organizational system.

I could have just used it as a dog bed, since as soon as I put it on the floor to snap this picture so I could show you the 'before', Dime walked right over and lay down on it! Silly puppy!

Anyway, the original blocks were 12" blocks so I cut them down to 11.5".  The four blocks used for the outer panels of the bags were trimmed to get rid of any binding, but the four blocks that I used for inner pockets were trimmed so that the binding became the open edge of the pocket.

Since becoming a foster 'mom' for future dog guides, I've been carrying a lot of ziploc bags with puppy needs (paper towels, a collapsible water dish, water bottle, training treats, etc.) as well as the usual contents of a purse.  Now I can organize all of the puppy things into one bag...the pockets are great for finding things quickly, and the second one holds my other 'purse' items.

The final block (the quilt had 9 blocks) became the water bottle holder and a little change purse (which fits nicely inside the larger 'purse' bag).  All of this fits into the larger bag I carry so that now instead of riffling through a bunch of ziploc bags to try to find my wallet or whatever, I can get my hands on things really quickly!

The idea of cutting up a quilt and repurposing it took some getting over, but I'm going to enjoy this quilt so much more now that I'll see it daily and know that it'll keep me organized!