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Tag Archives: pets
2.14.12 Love, Laughter, & Cookies
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY! When I was little we used to give everyone in the class a valentine even if we didn’t like them very much. The rule was that you just had to be fair and give one out to everyone. I like that rule now, I am not sure I liked it very much when I was little. I wish that we could give everyone, everywhere, a valentine today. This is suppose to be a special day for expressing love. So hug those you love extra close today and make sure to give your furry friends a little extra something in their bowls. Maybe Louise and I can bake special dog cookies for her boyfriend Mojo Raising.
I found this site called She Knows Pets & Animals and it had what looked like really good treats, so I am going to try and make them and I will let you know how they turn out.
Homemade mini heart dog cake recipe
Yields 10 mini cakes
Ingredients:
For the cake:
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/3 cup butter (or 1/4 cup vegetable oil)
- 1/4 cup all-natural peanut butter
- 1 cup shredded carrots
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 1/2 tablespoons all-natural honey
- 1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
For the frosting:
- 8 ounces of low-fat cream cheese
- 1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a mini heart cake pan with non-stick cooking spray and set it aside.
- Mix the flour and baking soda. Add the peanut butter, vanilla, honey and oil/butter and stir. Add the buttermilk, 1/4 cup at a time. Stir in carrots.
- Spoon the mixture into the mini heart cavities, filling each one three-quarters full. Bake for at least 25 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let cool completely.
- While the cakes cook, prepare frosting by beating the cream cheese, vanilla and cinnamon together. Once the cakes have cooled, frost. Drizzle melted peanut butter on top or top with additional shredded carrots.
Hey wait those sound just like people cookies, maybe I will eat them too! May your day be filled with love, laughter, and light!! Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo! ❤
Tuesday’s Valentine: Love Comes In All Sizes
Todays Cuteness 🙂 via:arrackofthecute.For the Dog Lovers 🙂
2.13.12 Two Very Different Sisters
Some go one way, some go the other....
Louise and Sofie have such different personalities and I am sometimes amazed at HOW different! Lulu Belle wants so much to please me. She will come when called and basically do anything asked of her. She loves training sessions and will even try to anticipate what you are going to ask. Though nervous around strangers she really is pretty laid back at home and just wants to hang where I am. She is a Momma’s girl. When I open the kennel door at night, she runs in and lays down, closes her eyes, and goes to sleep. Louise learned to control her barking early and responds well to the ‘that’s enough’ command. She is shy with visitors, but a cookie in a calm hand will usually get her to come out. Louise loves her walks and waits with great anticipation for that time we have together. Lulu is afraid of most things at first and it takes her time to warm up but she is trusting more and more over time. She loves to run at full hound speed around the yard, sometime for what seems like an eternity, and balls and rings are her favorite toys.
Sofie on the other hand will not listen to almost anything unless there is a bribe attached. She is willful and headstrong and wants her way (pretty much all of the time). She is loving and silly but on her own terms. She barks and whines at everything and no amount of squirt guns or towel bonkers seems to effect her desire to have a conversation. She has an aversion to coming in the door and will stand right out of reach and then run away when you open it. Sofie would happily jump on every human she sees (if I allowed it) and waits for the opportunity to break the rules with her other humans because she knows she can (like running down the stairs first). Sofie comes along for a walk (and enjoys it), but would be happy just running and digging up the yard. Sofie is not afraid of much (except white garbage bags). She likes to lie in-wait for Louise when she is running her laps around the yard and then jump out at her from behind a bush. Sofie Bear loves to lie her head in my lap and snuggle while she sleeps. Here favorite thing in the whole world is her unstuffed Beaver, which she always sleeps with. When I open the kennel door at night, she goes a few feet away and lies down there instead. It is only after a stern word, and sometimes, yes… a bribe… that she will head on it, whine for a few minutes, and then… like many a willful puppy…. fall sweetly, and lovingly, fast asleep.
Sleepin' with the Beaver
One thing I know they agree on – they both hate SQUIRRELS and they both love their Mommy!
Two very different dogs – one happy family. Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo. ❤
The Hug Award: How Special !!!
Thank you Misty Shores Chesapeakes for honoring us with a very special Hug Award, you are tooooo kind. We were really in need of a hug today so it came at a wonderful time. This is a really interesting award and I was really glad to receive it. Receiving this award sent me to the site it comes from to see what it was all about (http://ahopefortoday.com/2012/01/14/hope-unites-globally-hug-award-guidelines/) and I learned about A Hope For Today.
So, as the rules of many of the awards go, I will tell you more about me: Though I earn my pay in the corporate world, I try to live my life in service for the world good both locally and globally. To me that means providing hope of a better today for humans, animals, and the environment. I believe you need to be the change you want to see in the world. So, I drive a hybrid (with the license plate ‘GIVEBAK,’ so honk if you see me), I recycle everything possible, I rescue animals (you all know that part), I work with the River Keepers to try and restore and keep my river and the Bay healthy, I support wildlife (I am a Certified Wildlife Habitiat), I support certain human causes such as Lupus (which I have), Crohns & Colitis (which plagues my family), and all kinds of Cancers (which has robbed me of many family & friends), and currently I am a Commissioner on the County Commission for Women, to improve the lives of women and children. Yes, I must say that sometimes I do all this for the hugs, but mostly, I do it for the selfish reason that I believe in the law of cause and effect – what you put out there will come back to you 10 fold: to give is the greatest gift I get, and at the end of the day, the only one I want. I have hope today and everyday, so thank you Misty for reminding me of the greater value in that.
I will pass this along to 5 blogs I have not acknowledged before, who are teaching me something with every blog:
Hugs and Hope from the zoo at DogDaz ❤
2.12.12 Sending the Vet’s kid to college….
Don’t you sometimes just have those kind of days. I took the 2 dogs and 3 of the cats (Muffin and the kittens) to the vet on Friday. Silly me. I was thinking, why don’t I just pack them all up in the Explorer and get it over with. Noel and Connie went last week, so they got to stay home. And at the last minute I actually added Louise because she was shaking her head a lot so I kinda knew she had some ear thing going on. Soooooo, V & I loaded them all up and off we went for the 20 minute ride to see Dr. Kate. Did I mention that V is not a dog person: Cats Yes – Dogs Not So Much. That must be why the whole way to the vet Sofie whined and whined and whined. Now she doesn’t normally do that but with 3 cat carriers in the back and V in the front, it was all to much for little Sofie, and way to much for V. That was only the ride there.
We did the dogs first, and it was a good thing that I brought Lulu because she does have an ear infection. I sensed it coming but it is a rare occasion that any of my dogs have ever had ear problems, so I was not sure. Sofie was just getting her 1 year check (we got her in March last year). I put the dogs back in the truck and then we unload the cats.
Stella and Nine needed their first vet check and shots (and they traveled very nicely). And Muffin, well he needed the old man checkup (you know what that means, blood, etc). Poor Muffin appears to have hyperthroidism, so we are waiting for the blood work back to figure out what meds to put him on. He is already on heart medication and a baby aspirin, but luckily he is a trooper when it comes to taking pills (as long as I hide them in cat treats). Stella also has an ear gunk, but not really an infection, possibly left over from a recent mite cleaning (but we would not know).Shots and blood done. We load them back in the truck and I go to pay the bill, but of course, my daughter had my credit card (because she had to get her hair dyed and cut yesterday (yet another story, you will have to read her blog to get that one)) so I was really lucky V was with me for this adventure so that we had a way to pay. And, for those of you with multiple pets, you know what that bill costs.
Sofie whined the whole way home so V was about to jump out the window. Now top it off with, when we got home we had a call from the vet telling us that the kittens have some parasite in their stool, so I guess it back there tomorrow to pick up yet more meds. Thankfully Lulu is a wonderful dog and she is letting me do the ear cleaning and put medicine in it, but Stella! I am not sure I will have any hands left trying to get ear cleaner in her.
I forgot to rob a bank on the way to the vet, so I guess I will just have to dip into my daughter’s college fund. But that’s what you get when you decide to run a zoo. Just another DogDaz morning at my house. ❤
2.10.12 The Blogger Noel
Noel likes to sleep next to me all day while I work. She is the office cat. Recently she decided that the thing that Mommy is always looking at (my screen) seems to have some cool moving things on it.
Noel sleeping on my papers
The other night when I posted the rodeo video of the “Corgi Cowboy,” Noel decided that it was time to take over the blog. She loved the moving stuff on the screen and started pawing at it. Please excuse me if I misspell or goof up from now on because I have a
Noel Blogging
cat in front of the screen which means that I am typing blind. Muffin has helped me on the computer by typing on the keyboard and he actually sent an instant message once that looked like “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.” He also knows the exact combination of keys to walk on to make my screen go sideways. It took me several hours one day to figure out how to undo that. I guess I will have to get a touch screen so that Noel can start to compose her weekly stories to you directly on the screen. I never had an animal actually focus in on moving stuff on the screen before. I think it must be like the laser pointer movement that I play with them sometimes. I shine the laser dot around and they run after it. I asked Noel what she wanted to blog about, but she really did not have any ideas (deep thought is not her strong suit). She said anything as long as it has movement.
Noel Blog 2
There is definitely going to be interesting now that Noel has discovered that things move back and forth across the screen. She is now chasing the pointer. This is kind of fun but not very productive from a productivity stand point. Oh well, it is much more fun to play with the cat than get any real work done. How am I going to explain this to my boss though. “Sorry boss but my cat decided to block the screen so my reports all look like a monkey did them.” Well, I have heard that monkeys are very smart and actually that if you give one a typewriter they will actually end up writing a pretty good book, or something like that. So, when I become unemployed my hope is that Noel will be able to support the family. (She is giving me the evil eye now and she does not think that is very funny. “Mom,” she says, “you know that I just want to sleep and look pretty, don’t make me work for my supper.”) I guess I will have to make her stay in her pretty pink bed next to the warm computer, so that I can keep getting my work done, and she can stay in her diamonds and pearls. Just another DogCATDaz morning at the zoo! ❤
