Bath Time

Yesterday morning at breakfast when Duke stuck his head under Greg's arm for attention, Greg informed Duke that he stunk! Now, I've been asking Greg to help me give Duke a bath for quite some time, but the bath had yet to happen. So, yesterday afternoon I took it upon myself to give Duke a bath. He doesn't really like them, but he did alright and he now looks and smells so much better!!! While I had everything out, I decided I'd give Ruger a bath as well. She also isn't a huge fan, but behaved and now is super shiny! Although, Ruger did decide to roll in a giant mud puddle immediately following her bath - it was a mess! I didn't make her take another bath, but toweling her didn't quite do the trick, so I had a mud mess to take care of inside later. But, the puppies do look and smell great!

Treats!

Since I picked up all of the ingredients on Tuesday for special homemade dog treats, last night after dinner I decided to make them. The treat recipe was shared with me by Pam Capelli and when she's made them my two, especially Duke, LOVE them! They were fairly easy to make, but did cause quite the mess! I made two batches and I think my two will be set for awhile! I have a few containers in the freezer and another couple in the fridge. Since there's egg in the treats we're not sure if they need to stay cold, any ideas? We figure for now we'd better be safe than sorry!

I decided to break out some of my never before used cookie cutters to shape the dog treats like cats and bones. They were part of a packet with a dog treat recipe book that I received as a gift. I think they made the cookie cutters the right size so they'd fit in the little box instead of making them for use! The bones are the longest, skinniest bones I've ever seen! Surprisingly, they did for the most part stay together, but it was one tough time getting the dough to come out of the cookie cutter. While I suppose I could just cut the dough into squares - what fun is that? I think this calls for new cookie cutters!

Here's the recipe:

Banana Bites

Ingredients
½ cup hot water
1 medium-size, ripe banana (mashed)
½ cup powdered milk
1 egg (beaten)
3 cups whole wheat or oat bran flour (I used whole wheat)

Directions
Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. In a large bowl pour hot water over the banana. Stir in powdered milk and egg. Add flour, one cup at a time, until you have a stiff dough. Move dough to a lightly floured surface and roll to ¼-inch thickness. Cut dough into kibble-size squares or use a small cookie cutter. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for fifteen to twenty minutes and remove from cookie sheet immediately. Makes about four cups of treats.

Enjoy!

Busy Weekend

Duke and Ruger had quite the weekend. On Saturday we attended Paws in the Park and had a lot of fun. There were all sorts of dog related booths set up and it was fun going around to see what all is available for dogs in the Austin area. There were also different activity rings set up for advice and demonstrations. Ron and Pam Capelli did a demonstration on carting and are the ones who told us about the event. They invited Duke to participate in the carting demonstration, so I packed his cart and harness, but forgot the shafts - oops! Eiger, Brig, and Jura did a great job demonstrating what Swissies were bred to do.

The day did get rather warm, but the dogs had an excellent time and all the Swissies (5 in total) had a great time and were so well behaved!















(L-R): Eiger, Brig, Jura, Ruger, and Duke



Right after Paws in the Park we headed out to the UT campus for tailgating for the Texas v Texas Tech football game, unfortunately the pups had to stay at home, but I think they were fine with that after the busy morning they had.

Sunday we did carting practice at Old Settlers with the Capelli's. It got hotter than we expected so we ended up cutting it a little short, but it was still a great time. Ruger seemed to have no problem with the carts and even did some obedience beforehand with all the other Swissies.